...

He never could tell precisely when he slipped away into unconsciousness that evening; maybe before he fell to the ground? Because he definitely couldn't recall hitting it in any way. He probably wouldn't have realized his lack of consciousness until he had woken up, but then he found himself knee deep in water in a sewer that he had only visited a few hours ago… He pretty much figured it out that he couldn't be awake at that moment.

This was very bad news and Naruto would have done something about it, but the water around his legs was too uncomfortable for him to do any thinking.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Naruto thought that it would have been better to continue the earthward plunge he was taking off the Frog's back rather than come here to find himself with that 'thing' again.

But the water was too evil and distracting for him to focus on anything.

He grumbled out a horde of bitter nothings, and then he frowned even more when he heard them echo back towards him, hollow and mocking.

Then he tried moving his legs around, shaking off the disgusting feeling the water left on his drenched skin, but he gave up quickly. The water was everywhere, after all.

"Ugh!" Grimacing in discomfort, he swiveled his torso around to look either way in the corridor he stood in, but he couldn't see any raised or dry surfaces. It didn't help that the entire area he could see was probably smaller than his apartment. The only things visible were the dark, dank walls with pipes running chaotically over and through them, the water-flooded floor, and the slimy, fractured roof, complete with broken metal meshes.

And the consistently annoying sound of dripping fluid kept coming from somewhere in the distance…

Acting on a random impulse, he started trudging through the water in a completely unplanned way; going left and right without thinking of where he was going, the goal of finding a dry place to stand on the only idea running through his brain. He kept on walking through the water -he hoped it wasn't actual sewage- but he kept going in circles, passing through the same point again and again, through alternating cycles of darkness and light as he chose a new direction after every corridor was walked through.

Suddenly, he found a somewhat raised dais a few meters in front of him that was completely dry.

DRY!

Eager and smiling like a cart of ramen had derailed in front of him, he redoubled his efforts to reach the elevation, jumping at the chance to get out of the miserable dampness he had been in from who knows when.

He raced onwards, now running like a deprived alcoholic after the last bottle of sake in the world, but he stopped a foot short of the arid haven he'd found; the orange glow around that area was much stronger than it had been elsewhere. Dreading the inevitable, he glanced upwards, slowly inching his gaze to the left of the hallway knowing what he would find there.

A huge cage, with a small plaque bearing the kanji for 'seal' where a doorknob would be in a regular double door.

He backed up a step in fear, feet plopping through the flood until he stopped. But then he froze up in a huge internal conflict. To get to the precious oasis of dryness he sought, he would have to -possibly- face the fox. But to avoid the fox, he would have to spend more time in the miserable -oh so miserable- water logged sewer he already stood in.

His eyes wandered to his feet, trying to see into the murky depths of the evil that surrounded him… but he only saw the beginning of his knees until they disappeared into the blackness beneath.

He backed up another step, then looked at the haven in front of him, and almost whimpered in misery. It looked so damn seductive…

"Aw, what the hell," he growled, and sprung onto the platform, groaning in relief when the oppressive pressure around his calves faded away. He sighed, rubbing and wringing his soaked pant legs – then abruptly stopped as a deep and penetrating snarl rang out from the direction of the Fox's prison. His head turned towards it involuntarily, and he looked upwards. Right into the blood-red eyes of the nine tailed fox itself.

Who was looking right at him.

Immediately, it was as if a huge barrier had been removed from his mind, and now he truly felt awake for the first time since he found himself here. And soon, right after this burst of awareness, came a burst of killing intent, as sweat pouringly hard to face it was the first time around.

He was now conscious of a few things that he wasn't before, most noticeably, his heart. He couldn't remember feeling it beating while he was engaged in the pursuit for dryness, although that didn't prove anything seeing that he couldn't feel his heart beating anyways.

But now, his heart kept speeding up the longer he maintained eye contact with the bijuu in front of him, and it almost jerked up into his throat when the demon bared its absolutely enormous fangs.

"What MORE do you want now?" It growled out in a voice that seemed a lot more guttural than it was the last time.

"My gift of chakra was sufficiently generous to keep you out of my sight for another decade! Why have you come back?"

Normally, Naruto would have answered with a -in his opinion- kick-ass reply almost immediately. But he actually had no idea about why he was here. It didn't help that the killer intent had paralyzed his tongue, to some extent. He was about to stutter out some words, his lips already opening jerkily, when the Kyuubi interrupted him again.

"Are you scared? Or has that ridiculous mouth of yours frozen?"

The slightest hint of a smirk ghosted over the exposed jaws of the nine-tails. It had been longer than a decade since he last got such a prolonged reaction of fear, and seeing the boy's face was very nostalgic.

Naruto wasn't known as a complete knuckle-head for nothing, though. He managed to shake off the aura of despair, pointing his finger at the fuzzball that was staring him down, and shouted out what he thought was a very good reply.

"It's working just fine, ya stupid fox! Just shut up and send me back now! We both know I don't wanna be here anymore than you want me too."

He poured his frustration and indignity into every word.

"Gladly," came the blood-chilling answer.

A pulse of red chakra emerged from inside the cage, and promptly bonked -yes, bonked- Naruto upside the head.

Both the fox and the boy waited for the boy to go.

But the boy didn't waver away, or vanish into thin air, or burst into flames; the Kyuubi was very disappointed about the last thing especially.

Instead, he was assaulted by an overpowering desire to eat Ramen. He could have sworn he'd stashed a few packets of the Instant stuff somewhere in the cabinets of his home, but he couldn't find his home anywhere.

Where was it?

Maybe the face with the giant red eyes and huge teeth ate it. Wait… It belonged to somebody, that face did. Oh, it was the Kyuubi's.

"Can you please puke my house back up? I really need to eat my Ramen, Huge-Face-Kyuubi-sama!"

"…That did not go the way it was supposed to."

The fox sent another wave of killing intent, potent enough to instantly kill a tiger. The boy only froze up slightly, eyes wide open and quivering, before screaming out, "What the hell?"

He looked around, probably expecting to find the walls of a hospital greeting him.

"I thought you were sending me back!" Naruto complained.

"Hmmm… It seems like neither one of us is in control at the moment."

The boy's eyes widened momentarily, and then scrunched back together in anger.

"How can you tell, Damnit?"

"Because when you came," the bijuu began, resting its head on its front haunches, "You weren't in possession of even a half of your pathetic mind. If you had come here by actually trying to do so, you would have been as aware of yourself as you are now."

"Huh?"

"If I try to force you out, you will only return to the retarded state I pulled you out of."

"Huh? Why? And how do I know this isn't some ploy to keep me in here so that I die on the outside?"

"Do you want me to demonstrate?" the kyuubi snapped, an orange tendril of chakra extending and waving threateningly in front of him, ready to snake out and hit Naruto again if needed.

"…No."

Sighing, Naruto walked back and sat against the wall that lay furthest away from his unwilling sewermate and slunk down into a thinking pose, crossing his legs and sinking his head into his hands.

The similarities between the way the two of them were sitting were lost on them both though.

What can this all mean? Naruto began to wonder, slowly accelerating his train of thought. The train had two carriages at the moment, one labeled 'I can't get out of here!' and the other 'That fox can do absolutely nothing... Useless furball.'

He added a third one soon, this one labeled 'This is boring, believe it.'

The killing intent had receded, and almost unconsciously, Naruto began to breathe a little more easily. His shoulders relaxed too, and he drew his hands through his hair, wiping some of the accumulated sweat from his forehead in the process.

Nothing could hide the simple fact that Naruto was afraid.

And quite angry.

He added a fourth carriage, this one at the front of the train now. 'Where in the stupid elemental nations is Ero-sennin?'

Naruto had no way of knowing what had happened to him. No way of knowing what time it was and no way of knowing just how much of it had passed already… Where the hell was that pervert when you needed him?

He had pushed Naruto off of a cliff to get him in this damn sewer. He must be able to bring him out somehow.

Slowly, Naruto's thoughts begun to loose coherence, the train and its carriages were forgotten, and Naruto sank back into the craving for Ramen that had had the fox sweat dropping a few moments ago.

If Naruto had awoken at that moment, he would have seen something that would have made him question the integrity of the universe. Jiraiya was sitting next to where he lay on a hospital bed, looking like someone had spat in his breakfast. And when a nurse walked past him, he didn't even look.

At all.

Jiraiya was too busy contemplating the recent developments to care about any women walking around him. He had seen Gamabunta catch Naruto before he fell to the ground from his back, and he'd wasted no time in bringing him to a hospital.

It wasn't necessary; the boy would have recovered from his ordeal in a matter of days anyways, but when he'd held Naruto in his arms, he'd felt peculiar spikes of chakra emanate from the vicinity of Naruto's seal. The closest thing he could compare these spikes were to the feeling one got when someone opened a bottle of Champagne in one's face.

That did not bode well.

And when he'd gotten to the hospital and lain Naruto down on a bed, he'd pushed his shirt up to see what had happened for himself. Having fixed the seal after it had been re-enforced by the Five-Pronged seal, he was well aware of its structure and function. Admiration for its intricacies aside, he had realized that more than a few links in the seal were very volatile in their power to contain and limit as seals were supposed to do, which Jiraiya had assumed was to allow the Kyuubi's Chakra to be used by its container.

But a few of the aforementioned links had now vanished completely, and Jiraiya was left to question Minato's mental stability during his last days. Why in the world would his Student design a seal that could be broken with nothing more than a few surges of chakra? And with a 'pop' too?

Since then he had been measuring and studying his 'disciple's seal in tandem with the chakra spikes, and he had also recorded more than a few instances when the Kyuubi's chakra had emerged. Once, the surge of chakra was so strong that Jiraiya was about to stand up in shock, before the energy fluttered and dissipated through the network of fail safes on the seal.

It would be an understatement to say that Jiraiya was confused about what he should do now. Tell the Sandaime? Of course, that would be wise. Tell Naruto? …He would probably realize it himself. Probably.

But what if the rest of the village and its figureheads heard that Naruto's Seal was dissolving? The panic that would emerge from that would set Konoha in flames.

What if he told no-one about this? That situation had the potential to go horribly awry. What if the seal DID dissolve?

Sigh.

Something had to be done. But Jiraiya decided to wait. Firstly, because he still had faith in his student and his ability to create seals that were virtually unbreakable. And secondly, because he felt that Naruto had a right to know and to give his view on the situation before he himself did anything. After all, he had visited the Kyuubi in person after he'd been pushed off the cliff, Maybe that… Had… Something… To do with this...

Oh no. If this was what Jiraiya thought it was, he was so screwed...

Especially because he was the only person who could be blamed.

Sure, just toss him off a cliff Jiraiya, What could POSSIBLY go wrong?

If you review, try to focus on plot ideas, because I have a huge problem with Inspiration...

X.x