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NHRK Chapter 1
🕑 Added 2023-05-09 01:41:37 +0000 UTCA/N: This is technically not incest…You’ll see what I mean later. Anyhow, this is a slow-build type of thing so if you’re expecting lemons shoved down your throat from the get go, then I recommend you look at some other fics instead.
Warning: Unconventional relationships ahead...though if you've already clicked on this fic then I don't suppose you'd mind. Strictly 18+
Hope you all have a fun time!
Without further ado…
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From the shaking of his balled up fist–the only one that was still attached to him–one could tell that Naruto Uzumaki was beyond frustrated.
“Teme…why…” Naruto said, eyes boring down into Sasuke’s, who lay slumped on the broken remains of a tree. It was their last dance, a duet of deadly proportions and conflicting intentions. The one that would decide it once and for all.
Naruto had won…
…and yet…
If Naruto could gain a ryo for every time he felt annoyed about the shinobi in front of him, Gama-chan would never go hungry again.
“You will never take me back,” Sasuke spat, blood dripping from his split lips, still hung like a hooked fish on his idea of vengeance. His only remaining arm raised to point accusingly at Naruto. “You’re just like the rest of them…”
Naruto, too, had lost an arm from the collision between rasengan and chidori.
Yet he still stood, unbroken…well not physically but in spirit at least.
He gritted his teeth and clenched his fist, his nails digging into his skin. Thinking of a better use for his now bleeding hand, Naruto grabbed Sasuke’s collar, pulling his face so that he could see the pathetic visage that adorned him. The sourness of defeat, the rage, the anguish.
Naruto almost spat at him. “Me? Like the rest of them?! I’ve been the only one who believed in you! I’ve been the only one who didn’t give up on you despite all you’ve done! And you…you’d still give your life away even after all you’ve been through?! after all you’ve seen?!”
Sasuke snarled back, unafraid, defiant. “I will have my vengeance.”
“And vengeance will have you,” Naruto growled, shoving Sasuke back to what would probably be his grave should he not receive medical attention. “Can you not see how your vengeance has corrupted you for your entire life? How it continues to lead you to your own destruction?”
“It is my purpose!”
“It is your doom!” Naruto bit back, yet he could see that his words did not reach the glassy eyes of his friend. For all his special sharingan and rinnegan abilities, Naruto knew not how he could be so blind.
“Tch…You will never know my pain…my suffering,” Sasuke said.
“Naruto! Sasuke!,” Sakura said as she body-flickered to their vicinity.
“Great,” Naruto said, feeling all the eagerness to stop talking to the brick wall he called a friend. “You have at him. I’m done with this.”
He turned his back to Sasuke and walked away, trying to find a place to clear his thoughts but he didn’t stray far. He knew just how dangerous Sasuke could be, even when disabled to this extent.
Over the distance, he heard the mutterings of Sakura as she, too, tried her best to convince Sasuke to come home, to not lose himself any further than he already had.
He knew it was no use.
Sasuke, even when he assisted him in defeating Kaguya Ootsuki, had always fought for his own agenda, his own idea of retribution.
What good was his vengeance in a world where people lived in dreams?
He fought so that he could see his ultimate goal come to fruition. To lash out at the world for his suffering. To have the chance to inflict the pain himself.
For what? A tragedy ordered by Danzo? Injustice?
The ninja world was filled with such treachery. He wasn’t the only one who suffered from its cruelty. He couldn’t see that the only way to move forward was to leave that anger and hatred behind. To break the cycle that trapped him and so many others.
That was impossible for Sasuke.
Naruto thought back to all those years ago when he made the promise to return Sasuke home. How he said that if he failed, then he’d break his shinobi code and wouldn’t allow himself to become Hokage.
How foolish and naive had he been then.
Now that he’d seen the bloodshed, the terror and the needless destruction of war…he had times where he realised that his dreams mattered so little in front of the tides of death…in front of the collective suffering of the masses. It was like a disease that festered like a foetid wound on the whole of humanity. A disease caused by a lack of understanding, arrogance, shortsightedness, and…desperation.
The past years had weighed on him.
Heavily.
Naruto was about to turn away, his legs trembling under the burden he carried, before he felt his hair at the back of his neck stand on end.
He was still in his sage mode, nature energy still coursing through him, yet Naruto all but felt like a broken receiver that could not accept its generous gifts…but he still had enough in him for his senses to alert him to danger.
He turned around.
He saw the coiling of Sasuke’s muscles, the disregard Sakura had over her safety as she was bawling her eyes out, the sneer on his face, the sobs of sakura, the hatred, the love—
“Sakura!” Naruto warned, and as if empowered by the wind itself, he body-flickered and made it just in time to push Sakura away…
…and received the tip of Sasuke’s Kusanagi in his left eye.
“AAGH!” Naruto screamed as he gripped the blade with his hand, reflectively channelling wind chakra to not let its accursed edges separate the digits from his hand.
Sakura was there a moment later and a swift punch powered by her monstrous strength caved in Sasuke’s chest. There was no hesitation in her movement, no delay in her strike, no remorse for landing the final blow to who she’d once considered the love of her life.
She grabbed Naruto to pull him away.
“Naruto!” Her panicked voice cried out, straining from the emotions she’d displayed all but a moment ago.
“Sakura-chan…” Naruto said as he was gently put down a few paces away. He used his one remaining eye to peer up at her. His voice was also strained, although for different reasons. Exhaustion. Fatigue. Regret. Failure.
He stared at her glassy teal coloured eyes. It was bloodshot. Her eyelids were puffy from her tears. Her expression…she was petrified, as if frozen from the tragedy that was unravelling before her. She couldn’t believe it. She refused to believe it.
“I’m sorry…” Naruto said, thinking not about her concerns for his health, but of other things entirely, “the promise…”
It took a moment for Sakura to ingest his words, to understand what he meant.
“Fuck the promise!” Sakura shouted, snapping out of her panicked state. She began healing him, using everything she could from her years of training under her mentor, Tsunade.
Yet…
Yet her hands were shaking.
She was always taught to stay calm no matter how dire the situation. It was ingrained into her, as a core of Tsunade’s teachings. She’d been calm, even when everyone thought Naruto had died. She always thought saving him was within reach.
Now…
Now she saw the writing on the wall. The one thing that was a rock in her life, the steady silent strength of her teammate, was about to be lost in the unrelenting cruel currents of this wretched world.
She wanted to believe that this was still salvageable, that he would come out of this somehow. She was a genius in the medical arts and with Naruto’s prodigious healing abilities, being a Jinchuuriki and an Uzumaki, she thought that nothing would be able to put him down.
But Sakura saw that Naruto had nothing left to give. She saw the weakness in his body, the fading flickering fire behind his only eye dimming by the second.
She didn’t feel this hopeless even when his heart stopped beating after the kyuubi was extracted from him.
She felt as if Naruto’s spirit was fading…that all hope was truly lost.
Was this what Tsunade felt like when Dan, the love of her life, died in her arms?
Sakura did not love Naruto like that, not the way he wanted her to, even after their night of elopement when she falsely told him that she loved him just to try and throw away her life in order to stop Sasuke. Her love for Naruto was only platonic, but even then it was as fierce as she could have ever loved anything and anyone in her life. He was like a brother to her and yet…fate will take from her just as it took from everyone else.
Naruto turned his only remaining eye towards the sky, disappointed. He knew not what he was disappointed in. Himself? Sasuke? The world? Perhaps he was disappointed in all of them.
He thought of the words of Hagoromo, the words of the prophecy. How Indra and Asura would unite to save the world.
Naruto thought he’d end the cycle once and for all.
Perhaps he was still too naive…too optimistic once more.
“Stay with me, Naruto, stay with me!” Sakura said, her voice shaking, her tears falling on his face as her mystic palm created a strange tingling at the site of the wound, but Naruto knew it was no use.
“I have…failed,” Naruto said, his voice even weaker.
“No, No you haven’t!” Sakura firmly stated, “Hang in there Naruto, you’re going to be fine, you’re going to be fine!”
She said those words as if she was chanting a prayer.
With a tug, and the sound of screaming, the sword was dislodged from his eye socket.
The sound of screaming came from him, he realised a moment later.
“You…should have numbed it before…you did that,” Naruto joked before he coughed out blood.
Sakura seemed frantic and hysterical. She was trying her best to collect herself but Naruto could see the tremors in her frame.
“I’m sorry…” Naruto said once more, almost like a broken record. “I couldn’t…bring him home.”
“Damn it Naruto, stop talking!” Sakura snarled, concentrating on healing his wounds. “I don’t care about that. I don’t care about the stupid promise. I should have known that he was a lost cause and I made you pay for it! I’m the one who’s sorry! I was stupid and I was blind!”
“No…” Naruto weakly laughed, despite it all, “I’m the one who’s blind. I just lost an eye.”
“Idiot…” Sakura muttered, her voice breaking along with her heart. “I should’ve relieved you of that burden years ago–And I have! I relieve you of your promise Naruto. Just–Just stay awake! I can’t lose you! Not you of all people!”
A gasp was heard from a distance.
“Naruto-kun!” A voice called out. It was familiar. It made his spine tingle. A memory that sparked from all those months ago. If there was anyone that ever loved him romantically, it was her. He just…hadn’t known how to react to it.
He regretted it, as he saw whatever potential love they would have shared slip away from him.
“Hi..na..ta-chan…” Naruto muttered, truly straining this time.
“Over here!” Sakura called out, “help me heal him!”
“What happened?!” Hinata screamed as she came into view, a fierceness in her tenor that rang with promised retribution should she receive no answer to her demands.
“Sasuke tried to get one last shot in when I wasn’t paying attention,” Sakura replied, despair lacing her tone, “he pushed me out of the way…”
It was then that the faint sound of laughter could be heard from Sasuke’s direction. It was torn and broken, as if he was struggling to breathe.
‘Serves him right,’ Naruto thought, ‘His ribs must be poking into his lungs…’
“That’s a nice goodbye present…” Sasuke made out between struggling gasps.
Then, more people arrived at the scene. Shikamaru, Ino, Choji, Kiba, Shino, Lee, Tenten.
They were tight-knit as a group, even when he asked them to leave Sasuke to him, they still would not stay far.
“Ino, Hinata, stop the bleeding, Tenten, work on his arm,” Sakura commanded, finally becoming the prodigy medic-nin that she was. Then, as she observed the other three girls using all their medical ninjutsu to the best of their abilities, she quickly got up and dashed over to Sasuke.
Sakuke scoffed, watching her approach. “Ah, still the love-struck girl, are you?”
Sakura said nothing as she neared him. She knew that Sasuke didn’t have enough in him to even lift a finger.
“Hold still,” she said, her voice as cold as ice.
“What are you doing–Hey! WHAT ARE YOU–ARGHHHHH!” Sasuke screamed
Naruto barely heard the rest of his pained cries before having the darkness take over him, pulling him into his mindscape.
~ In Naruto’s mindscape ~
“Kid…” Kurama said, the usual timber of his voice croaking in exertion, as Naruto came before him.
The body of Naruto in his mind oddly reflected the damage dealt to him in real life. Broken as all hell.
“Kurama…” Naruto said, coming to a snap decision, “I’m going to release you.”
“You–What?!” Kurama responded, almost choking on his own spit.
Then he growled, demanding an explanation but even that lacked the usual tremor from his once powerful frame. Now he felt weak, lethargic to a degree he hadn’t thought possible.
Naruto just stared sadly at him for a moment before explaining.
“We both know that the fight took more out of us than we thought,” Naruto said in sympathy, “He had half of your chakra and the rest of the bijuu’s. It was a miracle we even went the distance.”
Kurama stared at the blonde-haired boy before him, even when he so badly wanted to shut it and take a century long nap. “So you’re going to give up?”
Naruto had no reply to that question, only looking down into his open palms–or palm, because the other one had disintegrated from the clash.
“Pathetic.” Kurama spat, to Naruto’s irritation, “This was all it took for you to drop dead? Your mother would be ashamed.”
Naruto knew that Kurama was giving a low blow just because he wanted to ignite a spark of defiance in him. All it did was make him frustrated.
“I’m tired, alright?!” Naruto snapped. Though, as he took a breath to reign in his temper, he almost sounded defeated in his next words, his shoulders falling slack, “I’m tired of the constant disappointment this world gives me.”
“So you are unable to convert the pathetic Uchiha,” Kurama sneered, going for the root of the problem, “So what?”
“The prophecy–”
“–the prophecy can go to hell!” Kurama snapped, as if he was re-energized by the anger he felt, “I knew Indra and Asura, the brothers were like oil and water–they and their bloodlines will never get along.”
Naruto stared down at his hands ashamedly. “I…I don’t know what to do…”
“You take your promises too seriously,” Kurama scoffed.
“If I cannot even keep one, just one, then what weight do my words have?” Naruto said as he sat down. Then he sighed. “At least if I do this now, if I free you, you don’t have to die with me.”
Kurama turned his head away, refusing to look at his warden. The giant being did not want Naruto to see his expression, his own heartbreak. “Foolish child…I was free the moment you bonded with me, the moment you became my friend…”
At that, Naruto looked away from the giant fox as well, though in shame.
“What do you mean?” Naruto asked, trying to hide his sadness, but too curious to remain silent.
“...” Kurama didn’t respond.
“Well…leaving now wouldn’t be such a terrible idea, would it?” Naruto suggested. “Just tell me how it works. There's no sealing tag to pull off anymore.”
“Tch,” Kurama shook his giant head. “I will stay.”
“–But”
“I WILL STAY!” Kurama shouted with all the power he could muster, his voice reverberating throughout Naruto’s mindscape. “I will not abandon you, even if you’ve abandoned yourself.”
“Abandon myself? I’m dying for Kami’s sake!” Naruto argued. “Even Sakura can’t save me the way I am. I have nothing left in me!”
“Ye of little faith…” Kurama tittered, then he tilted his head up as if noticing something in the ceiling, “Hm? What’s this?”
Naruto didn’t dare hope that something could bring him back from this. “What is it?”
“Someone is meddling with our fates…” Kurama said, “It’s…Hagoromo? What are you planning on doing, old man?”
“What do you–Argh!” Naruto interrupted himself with a scream. “My eye!”
Naruto grabbed at his left eye–or where it would have been before it was stabbed. “What’s happening–”
“Naruto!” Kurama shouted.
~In the real world~
The next thing Naruto knew, he was back in the realm of consciousness, staring into the many worried faces that were above him.
“Hinata-chan, Sakura-chan, Ino…everyone,” Naruto muttered, “What just happened?”
“Oh thank Kami you’re back!” Sakura said, “We’re transplanting your eye right now, try to stay awake!”
“Naruto-kun!” Hinata said, her face was one of deep empathy, “please hang in there! You’ll be okay!”
“Y–you’re…transplanting…my eye? With…what?....whose?” Naruto asked, his voice too weak to portray his bafflement. Though for some reason he felt energy flowing back into him.
Sakura raised her hand to show him, and there, in her bloodied digits, was an eye.
And not just any eye…it was a rinnegan. A six tomoe rinnegan.
“Wha–” Then almost as if coming into a realisation, Naruto glanced as best he could to look at where he remembered Sasuke being. There was only one place where it could potentially have come from.
What he saw made him gasp. There, Sasuke was…as a bloody smear that painted the trees behind it red.
“S–sakura-chan,” Naruto said. He turned back to her to see her teary teal-coloured eyes. “You–you didn’t–I–I’m sorry–”
“Don’t you dare apologise again,” Sakura said, “At least he won’t hurt anyone anymore. Now, hold still.”
Naruto could only remain as he was, like a wet strand of noodle splattered on the sidewalk.
The operation to save him began.
The sensations he felt were, in a word, strange. Sometimes there would be pain, but most of the time it just felt itchy. Sakura, Hinata and Ino were working on his eye and Tenten was doing a stellar job working on his arm. Limb dismemberment was a much more common injury in the battlefield compared to transplanting an eye, so Tenten seemed comfortable being given the duty to fix him up there.
Asides from the physical sensations, what truly occupied his tumultuous mind was the crushing disappointment that Sasuke had departed from this world without receiving the help he really needed.
Was there anything he could have done differently?
Was he a terrible person to have let a friend fall this far from his path?
These questions rang in his mind as he was being treated.
It took about an hour and there seemed to be many steps in the process. Naruto knew enough medical jutsu from Sakura to fix up cuts and scrapes or to stop the bleeding during emergencies but operations such as these were well beyond him…actually he did regrow Kakashi’s eye using creation of all things but that was before Hagoromo took back is sage of six paths yang seal.
He didn’t know how to feel about having a rinnegan. Honestly, he would’ve preferred to just have his regular eye back. Now, with this, it was as if a part of Sasuke would always be with him to remind him of his failure.
Then something tickled his mind as he rode on that thought.
‘…Wait…uniting the blood of Asura and Indra…’
‘…There wasn’t any chance that this was what the prophecy meant…’
‘…right?’
Then, with a cold tingling feeling, he could see from his left eye again.
He felt invigorated, like something had breathed new life into him.
“Feel better?” Sakura asked, her emotions had calmed down over the hour, and a faint cheerfulness could be heard from her voice. It seemed that her brother in all but name would survive this after all…
He truly was a person who fought against all odds…
“Yeah,” Naruto said, blinking, “I can fully see again!”
Sakura smiled at him, though it was fragile and filled with bitter warmth. She was glad that he was okay. She was saddened at the cost they both had to pay for it to happen.
She didn’t regret her actions.
She just wished she’d seen it sooner. All this trouble would have been avoided if her resolve had been stronger.
“That’s good. I’m glad–” Sakura began but she was interrupted as Naruto began shaking.
“Argh!” Naruto shouted as he felt himself vibrate. It was yet another odd sensation he felt over the past hour, and he couldn’t tell whether he liked it.
“Naruto!” everyone shouted.
But that was the last they all saw of him.
Because just like that, he was gone.
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Naruto felt the world around him spin.
He could no longer tell where he was.
A cloud of confusion fogged his mind, blinding him to the breaking of reality, the twisting of time, making him not understand what was happening.
Truly and utterly.
There were strange shapes, colours, sounds coming from all directions, scents of ash and smoke.
He didn’t understand. Couldn’t.
“K–Kurama!” Naruto shouted aloud, “What in the world is going on?!”
Like a faint echo, he heard a mutter come back from his…mindscape? Or was that just an echo from a distance?
He could not tell.
Then, it was over.
…and Naruto felt like he needed to vomit.
He flopped over to lay on his stomach, his single arm propelling himself upwards a bit before he projectile vomited his lunch onto the rocky grounds of the valley of the end.
“Oh Kami,” He said once he thought it was over.
Then he vomited some more.
It took him a moment to gather his bearings and as he found himself steady enough to look around…and he saw that he was alone.
He was in the exact same place he was a moment ago, in the valley of the end after his fight with Sasuke but none of his friends were there.
“Where did everyone go?” Naruto asked aloud, “Kurama, you have an explanation for all of this?”
“...”
He received no response.
Naruto felt his stomach drop, truly feeling a sense of loneliness this time.
‘No. No no no! Not Kurama!’
“K-kurama?” Naruto’s voice shook as he said it. He worried that whatever had happened to him had killed his friend.
Then, all of a sudden…
*Crash*
Naruto jumped as, to the forest surrounding the valley on his left, he heard something awfully large impact the ground. It was as if old man Onoki had summoned another meteor out of the sky and made it land right next to him.
With an intuitive feeling in his gut, Naruto made his way towards where he heard the sound of impact had come from, almost stumbling on his own feet in his dizziness.
Lo and behold, it was none other than Kurama…
…outside of Naruto’s belly.
The demon of hatred was truly enormous as he eclipsed the trees in his size. His fur was like a field of tall orange grass, rustling in the wind.
“Kurama!” Naruto shouted as the giant fox shook his head to regain his composure. He’d been ungracefully dropped in the middle of the forest like a giant ragdoll.
Naruto looked at him up and down. “You’re free!”
“Huh? Wha–” Kurama said before his eyes widened as he took in his surroundings. “What in Hagoromo’s name–”
Then Kurama caught a look of Naruto. “…What happened to your eye?”
“Eh?” Naruto responded before shaking his head to clear the last remaining dregs of wooziness, “I can see perfectly fine Kurama. More importantly, you’re free! And–and I’m not dead from it!”
Naruto patted himself down just to check that he was still in one piece.
Kurama too, looked upon himself, as if seeing truly for the first time that he was free.
…after all these years.
“Who cares about that, brat,” Kurama said, ignoring his own newfound feeling of freedom until he could digest it later. He was too confused, too…too lost in what just occurred to him and his container.
So Kurama backstepped the topic a bit. “You have a Rinnegan. Why?”
Naruto looked at the giant fox quizzically.
“Oh, you didn’t see Sakura, Hinata and Ino working on transplanting Sasuke’s eye on me the past hour or so?” Naruto tilted his head in question.
“No?” Kurama said, tone unsure, then he hesitated, “Oh, wait, I think I remember something of the sort. I was distracted by father’s energy coursing through us.”
It was Naruto’s turn to look confused. “You mean Old man Hagoromo?”
Kurama nodded. “I sensed him meddling with fate…or perhaps he was just enforcing it. Who knows what goes on in his plane of existence.”
Naruto took a moment to digest the words, only to have his thoughts track back to what plagued his mind earlier. “Wait, you can’t be saying that–”
“–That this was what he meant by the unity of the blood of Asura and Indra?” Kurama finished for him, already reading Naruto’s thoughts. “…perhaps.”
“But…it’s–it’s an eye, not Sasuke’s blood!” Naruto protested.
“Prophecies can be fickle…” Kurama flicked his long, drooping ears and licked his lips as if tasting the air.
“...Didn’t you say that the prophecy can go to hell just an hour ago?” Naruto asked.
Kurama shrugged, which looked awfully strange on a giant fox, as the motion uprooted a few trees that were partially dangling from him in his prone form, “perhaps that was why he granted that Sasuke brat the eye in the first place. He foresaw that this would happen.”
Naruto’s eyebrows arched quizzically. “Say…how can Hagoromo even do all this, all that you’re suggesting? Isn’t he dead?”
Kurama shook his head. “He cannot be defined by life and death like mere mortals such as you as he partially presides over those dominions. Even one such as I do not understand the nature of his existence.”
That explanation flew above Naruto’s head. “Right…anyways, do you know what just happened? Where did everyone go? And how did you get pulled out of me?”
Kurama shook his head. “I do not know, but…”
Kurama looked around. “I have been imprisoned for so long that now I’m free, I do not know what to do.”
The giant fox looked at Naruto like he wanted nothing more than to jump back into his vessel amidst such uncertainty.
Naruto looked on sympathetically, feeling guilt for his friend’s imprisonment. “I’m sorry for that Kurama, on behalf of my clan–no, on behalf of all shinobi. We did wrong by you.”
Kurama let out a deep sigh, seeing that Naruto was clearly misinterpreting the look that Kurama gave him. “I don’t want an apology, boy. Least of all, coming from you.”
Naruto swallowed. “Well whatever it is you’re going to do…I…”
Kurama, to Naruto’s surprise, gave him a smile.
Then he flicked his head, swinging his giant ears such that it sort of slapped Naruto in the face…or his entire body from how big it was.
“Ow!” Naruto yelped.
Kurama huffed. “That was for giving up on me when things went to shit. I don’t want to hear anything of that sort coming from you again, boy.”
Naruto rolled his eyes in response. “Yes mom…”
Kurama also rolled his eyes at that. Then he took a moment to analyse his thoughts before speaking.
He took on a more heartfelt, sombre tone. One that Naruto had never heard him take before.
Kurama locked eyes with his container. “I’ve always been with you, brat, ever since you were born…and since our bond, whether you know it or not, we made a pact. To be friends, and in a way, brothers. You are the descendant of my creator. A part of me will always be with you, Naruto.”
Naruto felt a rush of emotions flood him from those words. He became a bit teary-eyed but he nodded. Understanding the meaning behind the fox’s words.
It was a farewell.
“Where will you go?”
“Somewhere safe,” Kurama responded, yet as he did so his ears perked up. “That’s…strange…”
“What is it?” Naruto enquired.
“I sense my kin…they are still imprisoned in their jinchuuriki…”
“What?!” Naruto jumped, confusion and alarm turned his blood cold, “but that shouldn’t be possible!”
Kurama’s eyes flickered as if he was expanding his senses to the world, seeing it from a perspective Naruto could sort of emulate through his sage mode. “I feel that not all is as it seems, Naruto. For now, return home to Konoha, though I advise you to be cautious. Sneak in and observe. You’ve been good at that ever since you were a child.” Kurama said.
“Why would I need to?” Naruto asked, confused.
“Just do it. Observe and learn. Make your decisions from there. I, on the other hand, just thought of a great place to stay.”
“Where?”
“Uzu.”
“Uzu?” Naruto enquired.
“Uzushiogakure, the home of your ancestors. It pains me to return to a place where I was once imprisoned but I sense that none occupies that land after its destruction.” Kurama turned to Naruto. “Do what you need to do and then come find me there.”
Naruto shakily nodded, “A–alright. G–goodbye, Kurama.”
The giant fox shook his head at the dramatic reaction of his former vessel, amused.
“This will not be the last time we see each other…brother. If not, I will hunt you down myself,” Kurama smiled once more and then, with a great leap and a flap of his mighty tails, he was gone.
Just like that.
Naruto just stood there. It all came crashing down so quickly.
Now he had…what did they call it? Chronic loneliness? Decision paralysis? Whatever more mental conditions a Yamanaka could attach to him?
He didn’t know.
All he wanted to do was just go home and sleep. He prayed that whatever just happened, that they did not take just that little thing away from him.
Oh how wrong he was.
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