9 Nine Tails 9

His head spun.

Like… really spun until he just wanted to vomit. He opened his eyes just before he felt his body regurgitating whatever he had ate. His first thought was that someone had messed with his eyes, because all he was seeing was blue and some fluffy white puffs…

Oh, right. He was seeing the sky.

And just then he took into account his sense of touch. He felt soft but spiky things pinching the back of his body, and the wind breeze caressing his hair and face.

His sense of smell activated immediately, bringing him the scents of fresh grass, wet dirt, dried leaves and old conifers that were signature of a forest.

It just made him want to vomit more.

It was right in that moment when he started to wonder about his situation. And the problem was that he didn't have the slightest clue about it. He didn't know where he was or how he got here, but his first thought on the matter was that he must have been really drunk to get a hangover of such caliber. That kind of unnerved him. What had he done yesterday to end up in a forest and with a hangover that would make any man think twice about ingesting alcohol?

The nausea assaulted him again, but this time his chaotic mind could ignore it more due to the questions that his mind was fretting over.

His head stopped spinning and the urge to regurgitate faded to the point he could actually register where he was: lying, limbs spread randomly, on a bed of grass in a forest clearing. He raised his torso so he could sit, but when he did his head began to spin again. He groaned in protest to the feeling and placed his hands on the top of his head in a desperate attempt to end the sick sensation.

Burnt corpses were scattered inside a smoking crater. Some of the corpses wore green flack jackets, proving that they were dead shinobi, but others looked like some kind plant-man hybrid, all charred and smoking. Inside of the crater stood a young man six feet tall, with golden blond hair dirtied by dust and smoke; tanned skin streaked with patches of dried blood, and blue azure eyes than shone with determination

Despite his wounded appearance, he was smirking with pride. His reason was a snake the size of an Amazonian anaconda, dead at his feet. Impaled at its skull between its lifeless yellow eyes rested a golden, three-pronged kunai.

"Heh…" the expression of the man -who was named Naruto- seemed one of contempt "Now you got it, Madara, I killed your most important henchman" he stepped atop the snake's head and broke its skull with a crack, smirking at the action "And now I have all my focus on you, and I won't stop until I snap you skull just as I did with Kabuto!" that said, he vanished from sight and reappeared next to a figure shadowed by smoke. With a smirk still on his face, he thrusted his arm with another three-pronged kunai in hand, to attempt to stab the figure. In a second, both Naruto and the shadowed figure disappeared from view.

To whatever witness remaining on the charred battlefield, the battle couldn't be described with nothing short of epic.

Naruto hadn't noticed he had closed his eyes until he opened them, gasping for air. His head didn't hurt that bad anymore, but it was still annoying. Nevertheless, he could now think clearly. And most importantly, he remembered what happened yesterday. It was the pinnacle day of the Fourth Great Ninja War, the day where the Allied Nations would give the final strike to the Akatsuki forces and end the war. And he was the one in charge of battling Uchiha Madara, but then Kabuto (a former apprentice of the dead Legendary Snake Sannin: Orochimaru) interfered in the battle. He couldn't remember anything further about the battle.

Despite his lack of memories on the battle and whatever followed it, he now remembered many other things, and one of those was that he could use Chakra… and he also remembered one of the many uses of the energy, which would help him right now.

He pulled the energy towards his head, willing it to fill his head to end the harsh seasickness that overwhelmed him. What he felt after that was as if all the blood from his body rushed to his head, but a while later when the feeling of blushing madly stopped he didn't have nausea anymore.

With that really bothersome problem now gone, he could assess his situation carefully. He was indeed in a foreign territory, but if he speculated on the types of trees, he must be somewhere along the border of Fire Country and–

"I…did it…" Naruto coughed blood as he stared at the only remaining corpse on the destroyed battlefield. The blond was covered in a shroud of white flames that were apparently fused with his body. The sight didn't last long, however, and suddenly he reverted to his normal appearance, which had gone from bad to worse: his hair was almost gray with ashes and dirt, and he had so many gashes on his body he looked like ha had just returned from a trip to a paper cutter. Naruto hadn't imagined he would take this much damage. He fought twice what was needed because the bastard Madara had a last-resort technique that could revive him if killed, at the cost of one Sharingan eye. It was pure luck that the madman only had one of those eyes.

But in the end he had killed the Uchiha orchestrator of the war. Twice. And now he could be in peace and succumb to the sweet unconsciousness that wanted to claim him. He was almost closing his eyes when he felt it.

No. This wasn't possible. Naruto wasn't supposed to feel the one Chakra signature he was fighting a minute ago, and that he killed TWICE.

The corpse in front of him suddenly began to exude a copious amount of dark Chakra that engulfed its body. The seemingly dead body stood up stumbling.

"This isn't over yet, Uzumaki Naruto. It isn't over until I win!" the voice was pitching and malicious, but it was also desperate. The corpse stood up to reveal a man with spiky black hair, grinning widely. One of his eyes was closed, and looked as if the man was unable to open it. The other was purple, with rings surrounding his pupil.

The Jinchūriki, in preparation to whatever the man would throw him, activated his white flame shroud that merged with his body, but winced a little when he felt a nasty burning sensation. He had extracted a lot of Kyūbi's chakra for the battle, and any more he took in was harming him from the inside.

"What you don't know, is that a Rinnegan eye is also valid to perform an Izanagi technique!" as if on cue, the purple ringed eye began to twitch uncontrollably, and finally it closed and didn't blink anymore, closing itself forever. "And now, I'll get rid of the threat you pose for my plan!" not a second later, the black-haired man dashed towards Naruto with both eyes closed, a long sword in hand ready to impale the blond and end his life.

Naruto, meanwhile, didn't know what to do. He was EXTREMELY exhausted, his body ached in places he didn't know he had, and he couldn't keep the Chakra shroud any longer. On the other hand, Madara was still ready to fight, and while the Uchiha couldn't use any despicable Eye Techniques anymore, his body could still fight…and his couldn't. The Jinchūriki just waited for the strike to arrive.

It did, and hell exploded into his senses. Naruto grit his teeth in response to the pain so hard he actually cracked one of his teeth, but always trying to hold the scream he wanted to unleash, unwilling to give the madman the satisfaction of his pain. The long sword had impaled him right through his ribcage, past his Chakra shroud, slicing through his flesh and puncturing one of his lungs gravely. But Madara's expression of triumph morphed into one of surprise, because that wasn't where he intended to stab his enemy.

The reason of the misaimed stab was an earthquake that suddenly shook the land, and that both Naruto and Madara were so tired physically and mentally to register.

"ROAAR!" a humongous roar was heard everywhere at a radius of one square kilometer, and with the roar appeared a beastly creature at least a hundred meters tall, made entirely of huge chunks of wood. It had nine big eyes on its head, seven of which were closed, one open and one half-open. The creature then started to trash around with no particular direction.

"No!" Madara's voice sounded shocked "NO! Gedō Mazō, my most proud weapon! You can't be out of control now of all moments!" However deep down Madara knew it was to be expected. He had no Chakra left after the battle to control the wooden beast known as Gedō Mazō.

"ROOAAARRR!" the creature gave one last roar of pain before the wood that composed it split apart. In a flash, seven beams of different colors shot from the inside of the wooden debris. The seven beams then took form and began to run while making circles around Naruto and Madara.

The blond ninja caught glimpses of the creatures circling him: a beetle with seven wings…a blue cat with two tails…a four-tailed gorilla…

Naruto wasn't someone that prided himself with extensive knowledge of the Tailed Beasts, but he knew one when he saw it, and right now he was sure that all the Bijū that Akatsuki captured had been set free.

The white wisps of flame that covered his body in this Kyūbi-Chakra mode were abruptly sucked by the circle of mythical Tailed Beasts. The sound of a yell of pain coming from Kyūbi reverberated through his head, which suddenly gave him the feeling of spinning uncontrollably.

And then his world became black.

His eyes shot wide open and again he gasped for air as if he had been holding his breath for the last three minutes. Certainly that wasn't the timeframe of the dream/flashback that had hit him unexpectedly twice already. And he had been out for quite some time. If he based himself on the sun, when he first woke up after the battle it was a little later than afternoon, but right now the sun was already setting over the horizon. When his eyes became accustomed to the orange sunlight he just laid calmly on the grass, watching the sunset while thinking about what he just remembered.

The new batch of memories solved some questions that roamed his mind, but brought many more that made him doubt the veracity of the flashbacks. Naruto knew they were true, however, and that was a serious problem if it implied the fact that he was in another…

His thoughts were interrupted when he heard a rustle from a bush behind him. Out of reflex, his right hand bolted towards a special pouch located in his cargo pants (he was grateful that his totally insane battle yesterday left him with his pants on, which didn't happen with his shirt). He actually found a kunai inside his pocket, which he drew menacingly.

"Who's there?" he asked threateningly, momentarily forgetting about his thoughts "You better show up or I'll shove this knife through your a–

He never finished his threat because whatever was passing through the shrubs got out, but it wasn't anything he would have ever anticipated. Perplexed, he lowered his armed hand, never stopping being alert.

"What the…" he thought astonished.

From inside the shrubs got out a fox like no other he had seen (and he had seen quite the extravagant foxes): Vibrant silver fur covered a body that reached over three feet tall. A small, elegant-looking face contained a pair of orange mirthful eyes. Below the eyes arose a prod snout that ended in a round and black nose. At the top of his head, its fur extended to form silver locks of hair. But perhaps the most fascinating thing about the fox where the nine elongated tails that protruded from its backside, which moved as if flowing in water. At first, the silver fox bared its fangs in self-defense and growled viciously, but then it seemingly recognized Naruto and its posture relaxed. Then, the fox eyed him with a questioning look, and proceeded to move to the ninja's side.

Granted, the vulpine creature's appearance was something intriguing and worthy to behold, but Naruto was even more intrigued by the sense of familiarity he had with this fox that he had never seen before. He smelled a scent that he knew very well, and when the silver fox moved to his side, the blond felt the remnants of an unmistakable Chakra emanating from the creature.

"…Kyūbi?" Naruto said doubtfully, stroking the fox's silver fur.

The exotic fox nodded its head affirmatively, as it looked straight at the blue eyes of the shinobi.

"You don't know the end of it…" a voice said. Naruto jumped in surprise and swung his kunai, having not anticipated a response. What was strange was that his ears hadn't received any sound, but the words resonated clearly inside of his head. Realization hit him, and his surprised gaze turned to the fox, which stared at him lamely.

"…I kinda anticipated that reaction" again the words resonated inside his head.

"What happened to you, Kyūbi?" the blond didn't bother to cover the astonishment he felt. A dozen more questions sprouted inside his mind due to this new event.

"Tsk…" the Nine Tailed Demon Fox sounded utterly annoyed "I lost so much Chakra during our accident that I shrunk to this pitful size and my FUR (my woeful fur) turned a dull gray color!" Kyūbi almost shrieked the last part while its orange eyes darted to every part of its vulpine body. Then the now-small fox began to mourn its loss of color.

Naruto was about to respond to the fox that its fur was actually silver, when he remembered a daunting fact he realized after thinking of his memories.

"Kyūbi, you do realize we are…

"In another world? Yes"

"And what should we do then?"

"…I don't know"

"…"

Both immersed in their thoughts, realizing that it was the end of an adventure…

…and the beginning of a new one.