Mizuki's incident sent a small ripple through Konoha's upper ranks, but it was smoothed over quickly.
He was thrown into the village's most secure prison, where he would spend the rest of his life.
Naruto, by contrast, received a formal commendation for "assisting the Fourth Hokage to expose and capture the traitor who stole the Forbidden Scroll."
Heaven and earth—the difference couldn't be starker.
A crisis that should have upended his fate ended like a comedy.
Life returned to normal.
But for Naruto, something had quietly changed.
There was a "new friend" inside his body.
Granted, that friend looked scary, had a foul temper, and had just been thoroughly disciplined by his mom.
Even so, Naruto was curious.
That night, he lay in bed and didn't drift off right away as usual.
He closed his eyes, focused, and recalled the feeling from earlier—being pulled into that strange inner space.
He wanted to go back.
To chat with the big fox again.
Whether it was thanks to the vast chakra in his body, or the special bond between him and the Kyubi, his attempt worked.
When he "opened" his eyes, he stood once more in that damp, shadowed sewer of a mindscape.
Far off, behind colossal iron bars, the orange-red giant fox lay on its belly with its eyes closed, looking listless.
Sensing Naruto's arrival, it grudgingly cracked one crimson eye, its gaze full of impatience.
"Brat, what are you here for again?" The Kyubi's voice carried a stuffed-down frustration.
Naruto wasn't afraid in the least.
He walked up to the bars, copied his brother's casual posture, found a clean spot, sat, and flashed the fox a huge grin.
"Hey! Big Fox! I'm back!"
The Kyubi rolled its eyes and turned its head away.
Naruto didn't mind. "Dad says you're the Nine-Tailed Fox. But do you have your own name?"
One massive ear twitched.
After a beat, it answered in a haughty rumble, "I am the mightiest of the tailed beasts—Kurama! Remember it, ignorant brat!"
"Kurama?" Naruto scratched his head. "Kinda lame. Doesn't sound cool at all. I'm calling you 'stinky fox.' It rolls off the tongue."
"You… looking to die, brat?!"
The Kyubi lurched upright, shoving its huge head to the bars and bellowing.
A blast of force roared from its maw, whipping Naruto's hair and clothes.
Naruto still didn't flinch.
He even stuck out his tongue and made a face.
"Keep it up and I'll call my mom in here."
The words worked like a spell.
The roaring cut off.
That vast body visibly froze.
Unbidden, the red-haired woman and her sea of golden chains flashed through its mind, and a chill rose from deep in its soul.
Its killing aura crumpled at once.
The fox flopped back down, draped a tail over its face, and grumbled in defeat.
"…Call me whatever you want."
Seeing the big fox actually afraid of his mom, Naruto grinned even wider.
This new friend was pretty interesting after all.
From then on, dropping into the mindscape to bicker with the Kyubi became Naruto's nightly pre-bed ritual.
Man and fox built a very peculiar "friendship."
A few days later, that friendship changed in essence—during training.
That day, Naruto was in the back-mountain grounds, practicing Rasengan (Spiraling Sphere).
He could form a textbook ball with ease now. But he wasn't satisfied. He wanted to get stronger, to reliably form an Oodama Rasengan (Big Ball Spiraling Sphere) like the one he'd used to send Mizuki flying.
He failed.
Every time he tried to pour in more chakra, the high-speed sphere lost balance and unraveled in an instant.
After a dozen failures, he slumped to the ground, panting.
A scornful voice rang in his head.
"Idiot."
Kurama.
"What is that garbage chakra control? Worse than that old crone Mito! Chakra is energy, not mud—you can't just cram more in and expect it to get bigger!"
Naruto blinked, then snapped back in his mind, "Stinky fox! None of your business! If you're so great, come teach me!"
He expected another round of mockery.
Instead, after a pause, Kurama spoke again, all prickly impatience.
"Hmph. I simply don't want my landlord looking so pathetic."
"Listen up, brat! The chakra in your body—especially mine—is alive. It has will. If you yank it with brute force, it will resist."
"Treat it like your own body. Like your arm, your leg. Use your will to guide it, soothe it, let it willingly fuse with your own chakra."
"Not knowing the basics—what a hopeless fool."
Naruto had been roasted, but he understood.
Guide… don't yank?
Treat it like part of himself?
He sprang up, closed his eyes, and extended his right hand again.
This time, he didn't rush to gather power.
He emptied his mind and felt for the two distinct currents within him.
One was his own—gentle and blue, like a clear stream.
The other slept in his gut—red as a simmering volcano, steeped in ferocity.
He reached out with his will toward that red current, sending a friendly thought.
"Hey, stinky fox—lend me a little strength."
To his surprise, the usually unruly red chakra came far more quietly this time.
A thread of it slipped through the seal and flowed to meet Naruto's blue chakra.
He felt them clash, repelling one another.
He thought of Kurama's words at once.
Guide. Soothe.
Like a patient mediator, his will kept smoothing and guiding, coaxing them to spin in the same direction.
Slowly—a miracle.
The red no longer raged; the blue no longer rejected.
They braided together in a perfect spiral.
Naruto's eyes snapped open.
A brand-new Rasengan formed in his palm.
It was still blue, but a streak of eerie crimson pulsed at its core. The sphere was a size larger than before, and the violent, destructive pressure rolling off it eclipsed even a pure Oodama Rasengan by several times.
"Yoko Rasengan (Demon Fox Spiraling Sphere)!"
Whooping, he drove the sphere into a towering training dummy.
BOOM!
The dummy—forged of hardened steel to endure a jonin's full-force strike—came apart like paper the instant it touched that red-cored sphere, bursting into a cloud of shrapnel.
Naruto stared at the wreckage and at the faint red glow still clinging to his hand, stunned.
S-so strong!
In the mindscape—
Kurama watched it all, the massive fox face curving—just a little.
"Hmph… not completely hopeless."
From that day on, man and fox settled into a stranger symbiosis.
Naruto still dropped by nightly to squabble.
And Kurama, every time Naruto hit a wall, would drown him in venomous put-downs… while slipping him the key insight he needed.
With tutoring from a "chakra theory grandmaster" who'd lived for a thousand years, Naruto's grasp of tailed-beast chakra grew by leaps and bounds.
His strength surged—his second big jump after awakening the Vortex-born body.
All of this was seen from afar by Shinju.
Watching his little brother handle the Kyubi's power with ease, he nodded in satisfaction.
Naruto's path was solid.
A "perfect jinchuriki"—one who mastered the Nine-Tails with a sunlit heart.
He would be the keenest spear in Shinju's future plans.
"The spear is honed," Shinju murmured.
"Next, I forge the strongest shield."
His gaze turned again toward the Uchiha compound.
(End of Chapter)
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