Grimm Tails of Remnant (Rewrite)

Chapter One: Unwilling Change

It was finally the end. Naruto, covered head to toe in golden, flaming, chakra and Sasuke with a mismatched set of eyes consisting of both a Mangekyo Sharingan and a Rinnegan, launched themselves at Kaguya with their sun and moon seal marks respectively while Sakura punched Kaguya from above. As the palms of the two teens made contact with the mother of all chakra, their sealing marks vanished from their palms.

With the seal made, the trio jumped away from Kaguya as her form began to swell up into a white, fleshy mass that quickly started shifting into an eldritch amalgamation of the nine other Tailed Beasts as well as the previous uncompleted form of the Ten Tails. This wasn't all to change as from her form, the chakra of the tailed beasts started to break off and reform into the nine tailed beasts.

Below them Kakashi, the former teacher of the three shinobi teenagers, caught Sakura just before she fell to the ground. As Kakashi landed, he was unable to catch his breath as the very ground beneath his feet cracked apart and started flying up towards towards Kaguya's monstrous form.

"It's pulling the ground into itself?!" Kakashi screamed as he jumped away to find more stable ground. Above him multiple rocks had already started gathering around the creature that was once Kaguya, forming the beginnings of a moon.

As this occurred, the chakra of the nine Tailed Beasts reformed into their nine former bodies before crashing upon the ground and cratering the very earth beneath them. Relishing their newfound freedom, the nine gathered together on the ground, where one of the Tailed Beasts, a massive, red-furred ape with four tails named Son Goku announced, "We finally got out! Kurama, your Jinchuuriki is really something."

Nearby, a massive fox with red-orange fur and nine tails smirked, "Hmph!" Kurama grunted. Even if he might not say it aloud in public, the fox felt the proudest he had ever been with his Jinchuuriki as he watched the blond celebrate the hard-fought victory against Kaguya. Once upon a time, if one were to tell a past version of himself that he'd be proud of his container like a father is for their son, Kurama would've laughed and said it was impossible.

And yet, this pride was a very real emotion that he was feeling.

Even as the earth beneath Sasuke and Naruto started breaking off from the ground in a massive chunk, both teens seemed completely at ease as they looked up to the now larger moon forming around Kaguya, with only the head of the now desiccated form of the Ten Tails remaining as it began reverting back to the Gedo Statue that once captured the nine Tailed Beasts.

"We did it Sasuke!" Naruto exclaimed as he continued to witness his handiwork while his hands held up the back of his head. After saying this, the teen let the chakra cloak of his Six Paths Sage Mode burn out to reveal a ragged orange jacket with fishnet armor underneath it along with matching orange pants and black sandals.

Naruto looked at his partner Kurama while giving him a thumbs up and a wide smile, not able to register the growing look of panic on the fox's face as he said, "So Sasuke, we should probably-" Naruto's voice cut off when he heard a chirping and felt a sharp pinch in his back until it reached his chest. The teen tried to say something else, but he found that no sound could escape his lips.

Trying to understand why he was feeling such a painful pinch in his torso, he lowered his eyes until he saw Sasuke's hand still sparking with black lightning through his chest. With an expression of shock and betrayal, the blond looked back to his traitorous best friend and mouth out, "Sasuke, why?"

"I plan to change this world and I won't let you interfere." Sasuke stated in a monotonous voice. He then sent a massive electrical charge throughout Naruto's body which paralyzed him before he savagely ripped his hand out of Naruto's chest and stabbing the blond with a chakra rod that he broke off into the blond's back. With nothing to hold him up, Naruto fell to the ground much to the horror of Kakashi, Sakura, and all the Tailed Beasts.

"No Naruto!" Kurama cried out, breaking everyone out of the unknown moment of calm before the storm.

The Last Uchiha turned to his former comrades and jumped off the massive slab of earth that was rising towards growing satellite prison of Kaguya. Landing in front of Kakashi and Sakura, Sasuke didn't have a chance to interact with them as eight of the Tailed Beasts charged towards the traitorous ninja.

The ninth, Kurama, didn't even think about fighting Sasuke as protecting Naruto was more important than avenging his Jinchuuriki's betray, and instead charged towards Naruto's position across the breaking battlefield. Behind Kurama, his brethren fought Sasuke with the single goal of erasing the teen from the face of the earth.

When Kurama finally arrived to Naruto's position with a swift leap to the floating chunk of rock, he found Naruto bleeding on the ground and sensed his other half, still within the teen, trying to heal him by containing the black flames of Amaterasu from spreading across more of his body. Stomping over to his jinchuuriki, Kurama lightly rolled Naruto over to expose the black metal of the chakra rod sticking from his back.

As delicately as his large claws allowed him, the giant fox slowly worked as much of the chakra rod from his back as possible. "Just stay awake, I'll jump into the seal to help my other half heal you!" After saying this, Kurama lightly tapped a claw onto Naruto's stomach where the seal was and let himself be pulled into his host once again.

This seemed to help as the holes in his chest healed more rapidly than before, yet the flames of Amaterasu were still delaying the healing process. At the same time that Kurama was fighting to keep his partner alive, his brethren were starting to lose against the Last Uchiha.

Even though all of the Tailed Beasts knew to avoid eye-contact when fighting an Uchiha, especially one with a Mangekyo Sharingan, it was easier said than done when put into practice. First to fall to Sasuke's gaze was Matatabi; the two tailed cat covered in continuously burning blue flames.

Following her was Saiken; the six tailed slug whose acidic slime coating his white skin could do nothing to protect him as he fell sway under Sasuke's Sharingan. Next was Kokuō; the five tailed dolphin horse. After her, Isobu, Chomei, and Son Goku were all defeated.

The last two Tailed Beasts put all their effort into fighting Sasuke, as they quickly realized that they couldn't do much to stop him, just delay him long enough for Kurama to heal Naruto.

And then, both Shukaku; the one tailed raccoon, and Gyuki; the eight tailed ushi-oni fell under Sasuke's genjutsu. Even with the amount of time that the Tailed Beasts stalled for the blond, it wasn't long enough for Naruto to fully recover from his injuries as Sasuke seemed to flash over to Naruto's position before impaling his limbs into the ground with several more chakra rods.

The injuries that Naruto had suffered prior to this had put him into a state of shock that prevented the blond from even feeling the pain that being stabbed would normally elicit. Watching Sasuke's dispassionate face as he jumped away was the last image that Naruto saw as the floating rock he was impaled on was brought up to the Gedo Statue's open mouth. And then, all he knew was darkness.

Outside of Kaguya's, and now Naruto's, prison, the hypnotized Tailed Beasts suffered a similar fate to Naruto as rocks were pulled to each of the Tailed Beasts and condensed into spheres that rose from the ground as eight miniature new moons.

Sakura and Kakashi looked at one another before nodding in silent agreement. Then, Kakashi sparked alight his signature lightning jutsu, chidori, and took a breath to prepare himself. Since he no longer had a Sharingan, the usage of chidori would hinder his vision and could lead to his death.

It was a risk the gray-haired jounin was willing to take if it would buy Sakura time.

With a steeled resolve, Kakashi charged forwards while Sakura rushed to where Naruto was imprisoned. That was the moment when the three shinobi and the eight imprisoned Tailed Beasts were pulled from this conjured dimension and back to their original world.

Sakura felt her heart sink into despair as the one chance to save Naruto and stop Sasuke had just been snuffed like a flame. Kakashi couldn't even tell that reality had shifted as his vision had turned to pinpricks focused solely on Sasuke. Along with his vision impairment preventing him from noticing the changing battlefield, it also prevented Kakashi from spotting a spectral, purple, skeletal arm growing from behind the Last Uchiha. This series of events all culminated in Kakashi's chidori stopping a foot short of contacting Sasuke as the skeletal arm grasped the masked ninja by his torso.

Quickly adjusting his strategy, Kakashi realized that he was going to die, and if that was the case then he'd at least take Sasuke with him. Just as the masked ninja was about to transform the chidori into his lightning beast jutsu, Sasuke grabbed Kakashi by the torso and ripped out the man's soul before he had time to react.

The light that once filled the older man's eyes faded and left behind what one might almost assume to be a doll. The purple arm holding Kakashi's corpse up in the air opened its grip and let the veteran slump to an undignified heap on the ground.

"KAKASHI!" A voice cried out in horror from behind Sasuke just as the young man crushed blue ethereal humanoid that was Kakashi's soul, dispersing it energy that evaporated in the air. Turning around, Sasuke looked at the armless undead form of a man with extremely similar facial features and hair of Naruto. This man was Minato Namikaze, former Hokage of the Hidden Leaf Village, and father of Naruto Uzumaki.

"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!?" Minato demanded of Sasuke as his eyes glanced around for any sign of his son.

"Removed an obstacle." Was the teen's only answer. Finally, after not finding his son anywhere, Minato seethed at the Last Uchiha.

"Where is my son?"

Alas, it wasn't Sasuke who answered Minato's question, but the Sage of the Six Paths who floated nearby in a lotus position. "I'm sorry," the elderly man spoke as his pair of Rinnegan eyes looked at Sasuke not in anger, but in disappointment, "Sasuke betrayed Naruto after their victory against my mother. Sadly, he was sealed away along with her."

"You're saying that Naruto is-" The sage silently nodded to the blond, while also muttering a silent apology. Knowing now that Naruto was effectively gone caused something to snap within the normally calm man. He stood quiet and still for a few moments before he glared at Sasuke with the golden eyes of a toad and orange markings around his eyes.

Before Minato could enact justice against the one who doomed his son, he fell to the ground as one of his legs disintegrated into dust. Glancing at the rest of his body as it was slowly turning to dust, he growled out, "No, not yet!" As more and more of his body disintegrated, Minato continued trying to get closer to Sasuke, even when he was finally reduced to a crawl, the man kept moving forwards as tears fell from his eyes until finally the rest of his body turned to dust that blew away into the air.

This wasn't the only undead shinobi that said dusting occurred to, as all the other remaining undead were slowly fading away. Some were disappointed with this change of events, while other were at peace with returning to the afterlife.

Through sheer willpower and innate strength the first Hokage, Hashirama Senju, still remained, even if parts of his body were also turning to dust like the others. "Lord Sage, this is your doing, is it not?"

"Yes, Hashirama. While my remaining chakra could've been used to keep you and the other incarnations tethered to this reality, it would be a waste when one considers the other options available at my disposal." The Sage explained calmly. The former Hokage thought about this before softly smirking.

"If you have a method to bring back Naruto, then I wish you luck in the attempt." With these final words, Hashirama finally faded to the afterlife like the other before him.

In the end, Sakura, Sasuke, the Sage, and the eight miniature moons containing the Tailed Beasts remained on the destroyed battlefield. "Sasuke, I speak to both you and my son Indra. I have made many mistakes in my long life and my failure to be a proper father and teacher have haunted me for these many years. This will be the last time we'll ever coincide upon the same reality. I wish that I raised you better." With these final words spoken, the Sage gave Sakura a sympathetic look before vanishing.

Sasuke turned around to look at Sakura as his body tensed in preparation for any attack that the pinkette might unleash upon him. When the Last Uchiha and the last member of Team 7 shared a gaze, the raven-haired ninja saw something in Sakura's eyes that he'd only seen when looking into a mirror.

Her eyes were filled with a lack of will to live.

When the Sage of the Six Paths manifested his spiritual form into reality once again, it was instead in the dimension that Kaguya had made, and where both she and Naruto were sealed away.

The elderly man was once as powerful as a god in his prime. With a mere modicum of effort, he could alter reality to his will, resurrect the dead, create massive moons, and so much more. He had been so powerful that not even his own death could banish him from the realm of the living.

Now, he was only a fraction of a fraction. His spirit had held only a fraction of his power, and yet he empowered both Naruto and Sasuke into a status equal to that of demi-gods. After giving away all that power, the Sage knew his time was approaching when even his once grand reservoir of chakra was now only a pittance of what it had been before.

If he chose to conserve his chakra wisely, the Sage reasoned that he could hold back his spiritual death for another two decades.

It's an odd feeling, weighing one's mortality when it had been nonexistent beforehand. For the Sage, he didn't know if he should be ashamed that even he held a small modicum of fear for death.

"A fool's mentality." The Sage remarked. "Only the young and foolish should fear what comes next. The old should be accepting of the beyond and make way for the young to take their place."

As he said this, the Sage looked up at the massive spherical prison that contained four large chakra signatures and nine smaller ones within. While some might see it as absurd due to all the effort done to create this prison in the first place, the Sage wasn't worried. The other eight Tailed Beasts, while horribly sealed away, weren't there to reawaken his mother.

And, even if it was illogical to place all his bets on one chance, he had faith that Asura, nay, Naruto, could handle any challenge thrown his way. With an expression marred in concentration, the Sage clapped his hands together and pushed all of his chakra into this last display of strength.

"Summoning Jutsu!" Slamming his hand to the ground, the sage felt all the chakra keeping him tethered to the living world get sucked away. Even as his spiritual death came quickly, he could help but smile in the knowledge that his lack act as the Sage of the Six Paths, his last act as Hagoromo Ōtsutsuki was to be a father sacrificing his life to save his children.

Before he finally faded off to the afterlife, Hagoromo witnessed a bright crimson coalescence of chakra grow before his very eyes, with the very heart of it being made up by the form of Naruto Uzumaki.

That was the last sight he saw before he was gone.

What he didn't witness after passing on was the mass of chakra turning into a violent vortex that began to rip the very fabric of Kaguya's created reality apart. Different blasts of energy were spat out by the vortex, as if a war was being raged within itself. These blasts, formed of pure dense chakra, cut literal holes through reality, leaving unexplainable geometries, colors and spaces in its wake that were continually shifting.

As more of the blasts of chakra flew across the landscape, they tore open more holes to this eldritch rift of dimensional energies. This tearing grew as the dimensional energies began to leak into the collapsing one, almost as if water were filling a sinking ship.

Within the center of all this unrestricted chaos of crimson chakra, the humanoid form of Naruto bubbled and shifted into both familiar constructs and inhuman forms. While this happened, the crimson vortex of chakra slowly started receding into the silhouetted form in the center of it.

Just before the dimensional energies flooded the rest of the created reality, the crimson chakra was fully absorbed into a horned being with white skin and ten tails that fell behind it. Then, the dimensional energies, no longer held by the vortex of chakra, rushed over this being and submerged it within its insanity inducing depths as the foundations holding Kaguya's reality together broke away and was quickly subsumed by the space between spaces.

Time; time to wait, to entertain oneself, to rest was something that Naruto hadn't experienced in a long time since Sasuke's defection and the Akatsuki hunting him. He'd always been doing something, from training his body, learning new techniques, doing missions. For once, this was one of the few times that Naruto had been able to sit back and do nothing.

And yet, Naruto was never one to be idle, especially when Sasuke's betrayal continued to come to mind. The last thing he remembered before ending up in this white mindscape of his with Kurama was the darkness as he was sealed into Kaguya's prison.

Then, he awoke within his mindscape, at least he thought it was since it lacked the sewer design that his mindscape had previously. Not that Kurama minded the new change, as in his opinion, "Anything is better than the literal shithole that your mind created as my home!" Time seemed to be missing within this reality as there wasn't any reliable way for Naruto to track the days, something that even befuddled Kurama.

While Naruto wished to finally wake up in his body, even if it was uncomfortably close to a giant monstrous statue in the dark, since it would be a change from the white space that formed his mindscape.

As time passed on, Naruto took to conversing with Kurama to pass the time, mainly by hearing old stories that the giant fox could remember. It was a bit one sided as Kurama didn't care about Naruto talking about his past due to him being with the blond since birth, not that they didn't find that fact to be amusing.

This continued between the two until one undefinable day, something changed as Naruto felt an invisible tug between his mind and body. Then, like a yoyo, the blond was ripped out of the white mindscape and into a dark void where Naruto couldn't even feel his body anymore.

Naruto tried to cry out for Kurama, for anyone who could listen. Yet, no sound came out to give the teen any sense that he even existed anymore. This lack of a voice, of a body, of a lack of proof that he even existed was reminiscent of the nightmares Naruto would have when he was younger.

Nightmares where he was simply a drifting ghost that was completely unseen by anyone who could validate his existence. In part, nightmares like this, as well as his treatment by the Leaf Village when he was younger had inspired him to gain the attention of others by any means available, even if he might get in trouble for it.

The void that he was trapped in terrified him simply because it brought him back to the times when everyone hated him for an undiscernible reason.

For what felt like an eternity, Naruto was trapped here as an intangible consciousness until a feeling erupted throughout his body, a burning pain that felt like his consciousness was being crushed by multiple unseen forces. He believed at that moment that he might die here, completely alone and in darkness.

And then, a voice spoke that broke through the silence of the void, "You aren't alone, Naruto." Like a switch, the pressures pushing down on him stopped and were instead slowly repelled away from him until he felt the complete opposite of being crushed, and now felt like putty that was being stretched and torn apart.

Just when Naruto thought that this pain was completely unbearable, whatever was connecting Naruto and what was being pulled away from him snapped, and in three different directions balls of light flew away from him and off into the void.

When this ordeal finally stopped, the blond felt completely drained from what happened. Naruto couldn't help but note that it was eerily similar to when Kurama had been ripped out of his body by Madara, except that he didn't feel like he was about to die, instead he just felt exhausted and drained.

Thankfully, it seemed like sleep was possible within this dark void as he felt himself drift off one last time.

The first thing that Naruto could note when he awoke to the world was that it was bright, with the light of the sun beaming down upon him and hurting his vision. When he raised a hand to block out the blinding sun, he noticed that something wasn't right.

Where a human hand with fingers should've been, instead an arm with completely white flesh filled his sight, with a hand containing fingers that formed into claws at the tips. "What the hell!? My arm isn't human!" Wanting to check out this new arm with his other one, as well as to see if he could possibly get rid of whatever weirdness covered his right arm, he found himself screaming as his left arm matched the right.

'Naruto, stop screaming like a bitching pansy and calm down! You're giving me a damn headache you brat!' The gravelly voice of Kurama growled through Naruto's mind.

"B-But, Kurama, my arms! What happened to my arms?!"

'Brat, sorry to tell you this, but it wasn't just your arms.' When Kurama said this, Naruto looked down to see just how inhuman his body had become. Like his arms, the body was covered in completely white skin with the design of his body resembling a furless Kurama.

The other massive difference between Naruto's new body and Kurama's was that while Kurama had only nine tails, Naruto's body had a tenth. At this point, Naruto noticed for the first time that when he blinked, it was with only one eye. He tried to wink with either his left or right eye, but he found the attempt to be physically impossible.

"Kurama, why the hell are my eyes so weird?" Naruto asked with a growing feeling of panic within his chest. He didn't know if this new body of his had a heart, but it certainly felt like it was pumping a mile a minute.

'I need you to remain calm and listen to me before you go ahead and freak out. Can you do this?' Shakily, Naruto nodded his head and noticed that there was an additional weight on his head that hadn't been there before. 'The reason for your eyes being weird is simple. You don't have them.'

"How?"

'You only have one eye, idiot. Trying to wink with a nonexistent eye is like trying to get an armless man to pick something up with their hands. You can't use a bodily function that you don't have.' Kurama stated with a groan of annoyance. He still wondered how his container, one of the strongest people to ever live, was such a brainless idiot.

"Kind of like how you don't have genitals?" Naruto remarked.

'Don't make me piss on you. I can't see a rod or sack on you, dumbass.' Kurama retorted, 'My body is not the worry right now, brat. I know my body. You don't have a single clue as to how your body functions. So, if you don't want to sit here all day making stupid remarks, and possibly getting attacked by some stupid monkey that thinks you're a demon, then continue on.'

"Okay, okay," Naruto relented shakily, "I'm just freaking out about how I went to sleep in a body I know and love and woke up in this freaky thing. And, what the hell is with all this weight on my head?" Naruto finally reached up felt multiple horns that jutted from his skull like a crown. He also noticed a distinct lack of hair that he once had. "Come on, my hair is gone, too?"

'All things considered; from my end you look like one of the forms of the Ten Tails. Well, one of the more humanoid forms at least.'

"And that's supposed to reassure me? I'll be sure to store that compliment in the 'Useless Kurama Compliments' folder that I have. Wanna talk about how our teeth look sharp enough to eat people with?"

'Whatever. At the very least, can you try and stand up instead of staying prone like a limp log?' Naruto rolled his eye and muttered under his breath.

"Limp log my ass. I'd like to see your face when a limp log gets shoved up your a-"

'Brat, I will break all nine of my tails off in your ass if you make a crack like that again. Now stand your ass up and quit bitching.' Even though Naruto wanted to say something snappy back to the fox, he opted to remain quite and focus on standing up.

The main problem with this task were the digitigrade legs that his body had instead of normal human ones. He couldn't figure out how the legs were supposed to work, and this hold-up became so bad that Kurama had to carefully coach the former blond, step-by-step, on how to walk with his new legs.

A task that should've seemed simple took almost an hour to instill the theoretic processes of using his new legs before moving along with the practical application of it. After Naruto managed to awkwardly walk forwards, occasionally using some trees as crutches to catch himself, Kurama moved to the next lesson in tail movements. It took the entire day to teach Naruto on how not to end up with his tails looking like a gangly mess.

Kurama almost ripped his fur out in his attempts to teach Naruto. By the end of the day, Naruto had progressed from being stuck on the ground to walking like a horribly uncoordinated four-year-old.

When Naruto finally had enough, he found a comfortable looking tree to rest his back against.

With a moment to finally remain still, Naruto tried to meditate and access the natural energy that should be around him, but when he tried, he encountered a hiccup in the form of natural energy being sucked into the ground, and a portion of this natural energy being passively sucked into his body, leaving the environment around himself poorer in natural energy than a forested area should be.

The amount of natural energy that he was passively absorbing should've activated his Sage Mode at the very least, yet it didn't. Instead, it felt like his days of training with the toads when he was trying to master Sage Mode and he needed so much natural energy to even get near an imperfect form of Sage Mode.

To add to this, Naruto had no clue as to what was sucking so much natural energy into the ground, but it worried him because he'd never seen this happen before.

Natural energy siphoning ground aside, Naruto also couldn't sense as far as he used to, and all that he did sense were woodland animals residing within the forest. He hoped that this was just due to him being unfamiliar with his new body, and he'd quickly reach his Sage mastery like he'd done before.

"Hey, Kurama, do you think you could try to sense anyone out there? Sage Mode is a bust for me right now." Naruto asked as he leaned back into the tree and looked up at the star filled sky.

'You're probably having difficulties with entering Sage Mode or sensing natural energy due to this body of yours being completely new. I doubt you know what your chakra level is or how much natural energy is needed to be balanced within yourself.' The fox theorized as he concentrated on sensing any negative emotions nearby.

Kurama didn't know if it was a blessing or a curse that normal animals usually lacked the amount of negative emotions that human could emit. That didn't mean that Kurama couldn't tell if a dog despised another animal or human, just that it was less refined as a human's emotional output. Though, it did make picking out sapient beings extremely easy.

Unfortunately, this was not the case for where Naruto, and by proxy, Kurama had ended up. No, he could sense horrifically dark emotions, as if a mass of negative emotions had taken physical form. Whatever beings were releasing these negative thoughts were clearly not human as Kurama had never sensed malevolence such as this come from anything human.'Brat, I'm not sensing people, but there are a bunch of signatures around us that are filled to the brim with negative emotions. Whatever these things are, we'll need to be careful until we find out more.' Kurama with a tone marked in concern.

Normally, the fox wouldn't be as concerned for his jinchuuriki with beings like these surrounding Naruto since he knew that the brat could take care of himself, especially after how strong he'd become after the war. But this time was different, Naruto wasn't coordinated enough to fight in this new body yet, his normal Sage abilities were acting up, and Kurama didn't have a clue if Naruto could even utilize his chakra properly.

Ever since Naruto had awoken in this forest, the fox was instinctually able to tell that the brat's chakra had changed. No longer was it that of a human's, light and fluid, instead it was that of a Tailed Beasts, heavy and rough. It was one thing to be a jinchuuriki that borrows the chakra of a Tailed Beast once in a while, but it was something completely different to have the very properties of one's chakra transformed like Naruto's had.

It would be important for the fox to teach Naruto on how to utilize his chakra reserves later on but right now the thing that took greater precedence was to get Naruto used to moving in his new body.

The fox was brought out of his reverie when Naruto said, "We can deal with it in the morning, hopefully. I'm too tired to c-" Naruto froze midsentence as his eyes landed on an unfamiliar sight in the sky.

"Who The Fuck Cracked Open The Moon?" Naruto and Kurama said together in shock. The object that had drawn the attentions of Naruto and Kurama was the massive moon in the sky which was completely shattered on one side, almost like something had punched its way through the celestial body.

"Kurama…" Naruto began.

'Yes, Naruto?'

"I don't think we ended up back home."

'This changes everything.' The foxed mused aloud as he now focused on the other subject that hadn't been in his mind due to dealing with Naruto; returning home. He couldn't stop himself when he voiced his opinion aloud, 'Naruto, even if we went back home I doubt that there would a home for us to go to at this point.' Kurama said sadly. Based on the amount of time that Kurama had tried to track while in the mindscape, at least until he got bored, they had been in the mindscape for a few months at the very least.

When the teen heard this, he couldn't help but recall that while he and Kurama had been out of commission, Sasuke would've been highly active during that time.

Even worse, ever since the Last Uchiha had joined the war, and then literally stabbed him in the back, his goals and plans were completely unknown to the ten tailed ninja. He wanted revenge against the Leaf by destroying the entire village, and then he said that he wanted to become Hokage later on with the goal of changing the world.

Then, Sasuke backstabbed him. And, applying what he knew about Madara and Indra, and how they had wanted to rule over everyone so as to prevent hatred from tearing the world apart, Naruto froze at what his mind connected all these clues to. "I know why Sasuke betrayed us."

Kurama was deadly silent when Naruto said this. "Sasuke plans to kill a lot of people so that he can forcibly bring peace under his rule. He captured all the Tailed Beasts to enhance his power, like what Nagato planned to do before we beat him. And that means…" Naruto's heart almost stopped as he came to the conclusion of his theory, "Tsunade! Gaara! All the other Kage! Sasuke's gonna wipe them out, and they'll be unable to do anything to protect themselves!" As he said this, Naruto pushed himself to his feet in preparation to move somewhere, to do something.

'Naruto, that's enough. Sit back down since there's nothing that we could've done anyway. With the amount of time that I've guessed we've been gone, Sasuke would've killed everyone that could resist him. We're too late.' Naruto's bright red eye glowed as sorrow ate away at him.

"I failed…" Naruto said while putting his back to the tree and sliding down into a sitting position. "How could I ever hope to become Hokage when I failed to save my best friend, I failed to save Granny Tsunade, Gaara, Neji, your siblings, the entire world?"

Kurama tried to search for something to say that could console his container, 'You did save the entire world…'

"Yeah, from a crazy rabbit lady who wanted to turn everyone into puppets. You know who I saved it for? A guy angry at how unfair the entire world is and is willing to kill as many innocent people as it takes to accomplish his goals! Even better, I couldn't even live up to the hopes of my parents or Jiraiya! Dad probably couldn't hide how disappointed in me he was when Sasuke came back without me."

At this point, Kurama had had enough. Yes, he understood exactly how Naruto felt about all of this. In truth, he doubted that he'd ever been as angry as he was right now, but now wasn't the time to rage and give up. Naruto couldn't break, because that would be the moment when Kurama would have to admit a complete defeat to the fucking Uchiha.

With a roar throughout Naruto's mind that impossibly almost deafened the teen, Kurama shouted out, 'Brat, my siblings are the playthings of that man right now. Do you know what it's like to finally be freed from a prison that you've been trapped in when you were completely unsure if you'd ever be released, and then, when you are finally released and given hope by one the few people in the world to give a damn about you, to suddenly have all your hopes crushed? My siblings just experienced that! And, shut your fucking trap about your parents or the pervert! The Leaf did a great job in brainwashing you to think that everyone will be disappointed with you for a single failure. I hope you're paying attention because I'll give you a bit of advice, you dumbass shit monkey, everyone experiences failure in their lifetime, you getting cheapshotted by the pinkeyed asshat was something that none of us expected to happen!'

'And, to add on about your parents and the pervert, both of your parents literally killed themselves to protect you as a baby, one of them even damned his soul for what he thought was an eternity just for you. Jiraiya died trying to find information about the Akatsuki to protect you, he even delivered said information with his dying breath in order to protect your dumbass! Those people could never be disappointed in you because you've accomplished more impossible achievements in just 17 years of life than most people could even attempt in a single lifetime. You cannot break down on me because I can't afford for my partner to get killed because he was distracted by his emotions.'

Kurama took a large breath as he felt satisfied with his tirade. Seeing someone like Naruto, a boy Kurama lived inside since his birth, giving up and losing hope was like a sign that the apocalypse was coming. The fox had created a few personal rules over the years that simplified his life; humans are stupid, there is always a worse prison, Uchihas can fuck off, and Naruto Uzumaki never gives up.

For a few minutes, the pair was silent with the exception of heavy breathing that came from both partners after unbottling their emotions. This silence was broken when the duo heard a roar nearby that put them both on edge.

"Time to move." The duo said together as Naruto stood up once again and hobbled away from where the sound originated.

Hope that you enjoyed the first chapter of this remake. I thank any of my old fans who have had the patience of saints when it came for me to actually write something new, and for any of the new readers for checking this remake out.

With any luck, my anti-depressants will hold up along with my sobriety and I'll have written another chapter within a week to make this into something of a schedule.

Thanks for checking this out, and like always;

Stay frosty my friends.