Chapter 9 - An old 'frenemy'

The sounds of the water began to fade away. Slowly, he began to asphyxiate. Soon, the water would invade through his mouth and nose and fill his stomach and lungs... it was now only a matter of seconds... Naruto felt his consciousness slip away...

'Listen Naruto, you failed the last final exam and the exam before that! You shouldn't be fooling around like that.' a scarred man in his twenties admonished the boy who was sitting on the floor in front of the class, tightly tied up with a rope. He was kind of short and scrawny even for his age and that, coupled with his baby-blue eyes and the 3 whisker-like birth marks on each cheek make him look adorable...at least it would if it weren't for the fact that he was scowling.

When the boy tsk-ed and turned his head to the side in disdain a tick mark appeared on the instructor's forehead and he shouted:

'Alright! We're going to have a review test for the transformation technique! Those who have passed will have to line up as well!'

A wave of boos came from the class but, in the end, the preteen students came in front of the class and, one by one, they began the demonstrate the Henge jutsu.

When it was the boy's turn, under the scornful looks from his classmates, he stepped forward as though he didn't give a damn about their opinion of him at all. He took a stance and with his hands and fingers positioned in a ram seal, he shouted:

'Henge!'

A cloud of smoke appeared and then... in the boy's place a completely different person stood. Long blonde hair styled into two ponytails, a pair of long legs, a slender waist - it was a naked girl, only her breasts and midsection being conveniently obscured by the plumes of smoke!

The scarred instructor fell on his back with blood bursting from his nose while the boy rolled on the floor laughing his ass off the closet pervert.

[...]

Sweat poured down like a torrential rain from the body of a 14-year-old boy. It was obvious that he was on the point of collapsing from exhaustion. Even so, his stance was a firm as that of a Buddha and if it weren't for the rising and lowering of his chest and for his eyes blinking, you'd think he was a statue.

One more hour passed from that moment and after god knows how much time since he first started, the boy's perfect horse stance finally wavered. But when his right leg began to tremble, seemingly out of nowhere, a bamboo stick swished through the air, impacting him.

'Do not waver!' came the stern voice of the old man that has been watching the boy all along from the side.

The boy grunted in pain at the hit and his eyes began to redden. He was about to cry not because of the pain from the hit but because of exhaustion.

'But I c-can't do it anymore!'

'Only 5 hours standing in the horse stance and you're already spent? Bah! When I was your age 10 hours were enough only to wind me up a little. How are you going to ever reach my level if you can not do even this much?'

But the boy collapsed to the ground and laid on his back, the muscles all over his body convulsing.

'Why can't you understand that I simply can't? I can't!' the boy shouted and tears began to fall from his eyes.

It was frustrating. It was very frustrating to pour all your heart and strength into something and after becoming spent to see your hellish efforts unappreciated.

But the old man only looked at him coldly. During the training session, it was almost like Naruto wasn't his grandson anymore but his enemy.

'Remember your vow! You said you'll train twice as much in Misaki's place. And a real martial artist stands by words even if that means the death for him!'

'Get up!'

[...]

'Naruto, don't let him take the scroll no matter what! That's a dangerous scroll that has forbidden techniques. Mizuki had used you so he could get a hold of it!' a man with a large scar marring his face yelled. He was bleeding from several kunai wounds all over his body.

'Naruto, Iruka is afraid of you possessing that scroll.' a silver-haired man said from atop the branch of a tree.

'W-What?' the boy finally spoke and looked with a scared face at the bleeding shinobi.

'What are you saying, Mizuki?' Iruka yelled and then said to the boy: 'Don't believe him, Naruto!'

Mean laughter came from Mizuki.

'I'll tell you the truth, Naruto!'

'Don't!' Iruka screamed but Mizuki continued without a care in the world.

'A rule was created after the incident that occurred 12 years ago.'

'A rule?' the boy asked.

'It's a rule that only you, Naruto, can't find about.'

'Only me? What's that rule?' the boy asked desperately and his face showed an expression as though he felt like something he always wanted to know was finally going to be explained.

'STOP IT, MIZUKI!' screamed the bleeding man.

An insidious smile surfaced on Mizuki's face.

'It's the rule not to say that Naruto is a monster fox.'

'W-What?!' the boy said with his eyes widened in disbelief.

'In other words,' Mizuki continued maliciously 'you are the nine-tailed demon fox that killed Iruka's parents and destroyed the village 12 years ago.'

[...]

It is said that before death, in the split of a second people watch their entire life flashing before their eyes. And that's what was currently happening to Naruto as well. However, something was different: there were many memories of him that it was the first time he was seeing. They were scenes from a fantasy-like world where soldiers all had superpowers, in a setting similar to that of Japan during Middle Ages...and they felt too real and detailed for him to disregard them as just a product of his imagination.

Memories of both lives flashed before his eyes in an uneven order but that didn't lower the intensity of what he was experiencing. Naruto watched how him from that world struggled with overcoming the hatred of thousands of people. He felt the anger at his best friend, Sasuke, betraying their village...and the pain at having his chest stabbed with a lightning technique by the very same friend. Naruto felt the emotions the other him had felt throughout his entire life: the joy during the times spent with the perverted godfather, the pain that followed after finding out about his death, the intensity of rage in the fight against the all-powerful leader of the terrorist organization Akatsuki, the disbelief and happiness at meeting the remnants of his parents inside his consciousness, the feeling of kinship that appeared between him and the powerful entity sealed within his body...and lastly, the despair at seeing the entire world falling into the treacherous peace of the unbreakable illusion that a god-like shinobi had casted upon the entire planet.

In the moments before drowning Naruto acknowledged one thing:

'That must've been my past life.'

He mentally sighed.

'And I thought that my current life had been bad...what a shitty life.'

Orphaned and hated since the very moment he was born in that world, bearing the hatred of his entire village and ostracized for his entire life... Naruto found it hard to believe that the previous him had been able to deal with it...

'That only if it had actually been me. I may not be the sharpest tool in the box but I've never seen someone that stupid.'

But this was when his thought process began to slow down. The lack of oxygen was finally showing its effects on his brain. In a few moments, he was going to die.

A deep regret resurfaced inside Naruto's heart.

'If only I could have remembered my previous life even an hour ago... alas, it's too late now.'

Had he remembered sooner, he wouldn't have gotten to that point of despair where he wished his own death...because compared to his previous life, the second life had been significantly better. Knowing that he had been through so much worse would have given him the strength to endure.

'Two lives and both were crappy at best. Will the third will be any better?'

At the moment when his life was about to be extinguished, a fiery hot burst of energy was awoken inside him. A sudden explosion rocked the riverbed and water parted as though a bomb had been detonated. An acidic, blood-red, energy covered Naruto's body and a dome of wind kept the retreating water at bay, away from reaching his body.

'K-Kurama?' Naruto asked hesitatingly

'How pathetic! Someone like you is not worthy to call my name.' A demonic voice snarled from within Naruto's body.

Suddenly, all the water that had invaded Naruto's stomach and lungs was forcefully expelled when the red energy began to course through his body and Naruto began to scream in pain. It was the first time Naruto was coming into contact with Kyuubi's corrosive chakra in this life and the giant fox didn't want to make it any easier for him. It was excruciating.

Scene break

Naruto crawled out from the water and laid on the riverside gasping for breath. And it wasn't because of having almost drowned but at the inhuman amount of pain he experienced when Kyuubi's demonic chakra flooded his body. Even so, Naruto didn't forget to show his gratitude towards Kyuubi despite the torment the fox had put him through afterwards.

'Thank you, Kurama!'

'I told you that you're not worthy of speaking my name!'

Despite barely having escaped death, Naruto still felt the blood rush to his head the assholish way Kyuubi talked.

'I tanked you sincerely I don't understand what's your damn problem!'

'You want to understand what's my damned problem? My damned problem is being stuck in a pathetic piece of shit, that's what my fucking damned problem is!' the demon fox roared from within Naruto, with a rage that he had never seen the fox to possess in his previous life.

'Yet you had no problems in giving it your all to help this pathetic piece of shit against Madara!' Naruto countered.

'Help YOU?' Kurama thundered in a voice filled with anger and disbelief. 'You dare compare yourself with Naruto? You're just a poor excuse of a imitation! The Naruto I knew was 10 time more of a man than you'll ever be!'

'I killed his parents at just a few minutes from his birth, I impaled both of them with my claw! Because of me he endured the hatred of the entire world, he was a cursed existence! His best friend tried to kill him twice and a distant relative of his killed his godfather. He was a borderline-retard and his talent with the shinobi arts was shit. He was ridiculed and hated his entire life...'

'...And through it all he endured! He fucking endured! He looked everyone in the eyes while they jeered him and declared: 'I will become the Hokage!'. He fought against the odds with a smile on his face and surpassed all of his rivals, becoming the second strongest shinobi in the world! He resisted my hatred and rage and made me acknowledge him!'

'Yet you dare say you are him? You dare compare yourself with him? You despaired only because someone close to you died! Pathetic! Coward!'

At the end of his screamed rant, Kyuubi was gasping for breath and trembling with rage.

'Don't try to speak with me ever again.' the fox boomed one last time and Naruto felt their mental connection being severed.