The Kyuubi Theory

Author's notes: Hello, and welcome to the story - I hope you all enjoy it. Please feel free to leave comments for me, be that positive or negative, critque filled or a single line, and let me know what you think. After all, I can't improve if people don't share these things with me.

Yes, this in a one-shot I'm afraid, so don't expect more from me on the subject. However, you are free to take the idea and write your own story around it - all I ask is some credit for the inspiration.

That said, enjoy!

It is one of the questions most not asked; How did the Kyuubi come about? The answer to this involves paradoxes; the theory that time is a circle and so repeats itself, and possibly ramen – somewhere.

It is probably best, then, if we start at the beginning …uh, sort of.

For all intents and purposes, Naruto seemed to be in the prime of his life; probably about 23, with no injuries that had any lasting effect (one had to love the Kyuubi for that), powerful and prone to eating so much ramen that people wondered if he was still growing.

Which left the young people to wonder why their wonderful hokage had decided to announce his retirement. The older generations didn't wonder quite so much, because they could recall when they had been the age of their grandchildren – at that time, they had still had Naruto as their hokage, and he still looked exactly the same as he had back then – in short, Naruto was at least 80 years old. The general belief was that his predecessor, the fifth hokage Tsunade, had passed along the fantastic age-defying jutsu she was famous for.

Naruto had never shared with anyone that this belief was incorrect. Just as he had never told them that he was over 150 years old – his dear friends had all past on now, taking his secret to the grave with them. Naruto had the Kyuubi to thank for his longlivity; years of being in constant exposure to the fox's own massive, demonic chakra had caused him to absorb said chakra, to the point that he was now, more or less, a half demon. It was the stuff that fanfiction was made of. (And thought sound in the distance is the forth wall breaking, in case you were wondering.)

Back to the subject at hand; Naruto had finally gotten sick of the paperwork that the hokage was responsible for, and so had announced his retirement to the village. As an interesting side note, he chose as his successor a rather lazy, but genius ninja from the Nara line.

But that's not important to us, no, what is important is that after Naruto retired, he left his beloved village to live in a cabin in the wilderness, as the more wild fox-half craved. In this hermit lifestyle, Naruto was able to observe many things, and also took up a habit that he had never been interested in before:

Yes, Naruto began to think.

He remembered the past, and all the mistakes he'd like to do over – how he'd have acted differently and so actually dragged Sasuke back to the village as he'd promised, how he'd have maybe fought differently and saved Haku's life that day, how he'd have started pushing Sakura and Lee together earlier than he did, and how he'd have taken the opportunity to enjoy the ramen more often before the store-owner had died from old age.

With thoughts of the past came also thoughts of the future. He was fairly certain that the Kyuubi hadn't intended for him to hear the comment of 'next time around', but when he did he found out a very interesting fact – time was circular.

There have been theories on this, and it turned out these theories were correct. The universe existed in a loop, eventually they would reach the end, and it would start all over. The same events, the same people, the same lives in an ever-repeating circle. This led Naruto to the conclusion that he could act differently! He would wait until everything started over again, then he could lurk in the shadows during his own life, and fix all the mistakes he'd made in his own life. It could be better the second time around!

He also worked out that, since he was still absorbing Kyuubi's chakra, the 'human' in him was going to die out and leave him as a full demon, but that wasn't important.

So Naruto waited. He waited as the art of the ninja died, as all that was 'mystic' slowly followed, as his wilderness home was replaced by suburbia, only occasionally going out to pull some prank by tricking some hapless fool into believing he was an alien. He waited, he planned, and he plotted the different ways he could fix everything until he left no stone unturned, no possibility not planned for. While the humans went about their lives, building nukes and such, Naruto – looking like a mark of the apocalypse - wandered to look at the changes in the world, appease his growling stomach, and dealing with people who had the nerve to attack him (sometimes he was able to do all three at once, he just had to remember to spit the guns out afterwards).

The changes in his appearance were subtle and slow to occur – the shift from his hair being blonde to red, for example, took a few centuries and visited every tone in between for a decade. The changes in mind must have been even slower, because Naruto still wasn't sure if something had happened, if he and the fox were now the same person, or if he'd simply forgotten how to find the fox's cage and the fox wasn't talking to him.

Nonetheless, he was a full-blooded fox demon, with all of Kyuubi's power, when the sun died and all life on Earth ceased. Naruto abruptly discovered, at this point, that demons didn't need to eat to live, they just liked to. He also learnt that no matter how many times he told himself that, it didn't make the phantom hunger pains go away any quicker.

Naruto spent a very long time on the charred place that had once been a life-filled planet, spent a very long time with no company but his own, before the universe died. It was, he had to concede, probably the coolest thing he'd ever seen.

The universe, ever-expanding according to most popular theories, simply… stopped. The expansion stopped, the black holes paused, planetary movements and the shifting of light froze in place, all those little movements that Naruto had never noticed until they were gone. The stillness threatened to consume him whole.

In truth, it scared Naruto a little, which would probably explain why he… side-stepped, would be the word, into a place that wasn't his world. It was like a spot between worlds – possible, if he'd walked further in he'd come to wherever demons lived. Here he could observe the universe without being a part of it. He was Maxwell's Demon.

And, before his eyes, the dirt beneath his feet pulled away, then the planet, and all the other dead planets in his solar system, and everything that came after it. Everything, to the farthest pieces of space debris and nothingness that made the universe, was pulled into a tiny glowing dot in the center of it all, and then even that was gone. Now there wasn't even nothing.

And then it exploded.

Naruto would later compare the death – and consequent start – of the universe as like turning a TV on and off very quickly; all the light was pulled into a dot in the middle, and expanded out again. But this comparison couldn't compete with the sheer size, of watching as the concept of something was born. Naruto didn't even dare breath (he had forgotten that he didn't need to do that, either), because he was sure if he did he'd somehow affect the universe and the earth would never exist in the first place of something. That would be bad, it would make it hard for him to go through with all his plans if he was never born.

The TV was also a lot faster. After the initial explosion, every slowed to less than a snail's crawl. He could take a nap, and the universe would still be working on building the same kind of atom when he woke up again.

But, eventually, there was dirt beneath his paws again, and a virgin sunrise was taking place in front of him. Naruto sidestepped back inside the universe, and waited.

He had to wait for a very long time – so long he would swear he was going to go mad. As it was he got very bored – so bored that he discovered how the find the nth root of a polynomial, using imaginary numbers. This really should have caused the universe to be destroyed again – he was glad it didn't.

He'd go up to those new oceans and poke them, trying to get them to hurry up and create life. He'd help and speed up the process, if only he knew where to begin. He tried making the shapes of animals out of clay, but that didn't seem to work for him as well as it had for Deidara.

Even after life began, even after they evolved past that one-cell organism, even after they started crawling on the ground, it took so very, very long. He slept again, through the entire ice-age, and tried not to wonder if it was him waking up, feeling cold and starting some fires that ended that period of endless snow. Time seemed to be different for him now, species changed and grew into something different in the blink of an eye, he had to focus in order to make it slow down so that he could examine them carefully. Generally he was examining it to see if it would react well to a prank, which would end his boredom if nothing else.

And then, finally – finally, there was man. Naruto couldn't contain his excitement, he danced (thus causing much in the way of earthquakes, tsunamis and other 'natural' disasters) at the thought that it was finally here, he could finally bring his plans to fruit, could finally fix things. He watched more closely now, sometimes even walking into the lives of the humans so that he could check on them. So close that the humans could see him too.

Demon foxes grow in more tails as they grow in age – the power is a side benefit, with nine being the maximum number of tails. Naruto had lived forever and then some – guess how many tails he'd grown, go on, guess.

Sometimes, he walked around the place, looking at the new mountains and seas, examining how the people had changed thus far, looking for signs as to how long he might still have to wait. (Alright, sometimes he also stepped on people, but that wasn't his fault. They were in the way!) The humans, not knowing Naruto's name, gave him another – Kyuubi.

This also brings forward the question of 'who was the original Kyuubi'? …It is something that is best not spent too much time thinking about.

Then, abruptly, he realized that he could recognize things. The mountain formations were all the same as how he pictured them, this little growth of trees was starting to look more like a large forest…

And there were ninjas, little people in dark colours staring in fear as he lowered his head to examine them. Naruto grinned – it was time! He couldn't contain his excitement, and dashed off in a direction that was looking more and more familiar.

There were many thoughts going through his mind, and he yelled out the most prominent. Unfortunately, when you are that loud, his cry 'Ramen!' sounded more like: 'ROOOOOAAAAAAARRR!!' This probably explains a few things.

This is also the point where we all now the story – and where Naruto is maybe a little clumsy with his feet, stepping on people, and his waving tails maybe destroyed a few buildings.

Then he saw, and recognized with delight, Gamabunta. It had been so long since he'd last seen the frog, that he went up to give him a big hug.

Thus, the forth hokage valiantly battled the Kyuubi, and defeated him by sealing him inside the baby Naruto. Kyuubi wasn't sure what happened – one moment he was looking directly at his childhood hero, the next he was stuck in a sewer. Then it hit him – well, a drop of water hit him, then the thought. Needless to say, he was upset, and preceded to yell and attack the bars of his cage – this may have inspired Naruto to do the same for all his life, i.e. in an "I'm upset – I'm going to yell and kick things!" fashion.

After a period, Kyuubi ceased his angry ranting; it wasn't like it was doing any good after all. Well, here he was, sealed inside… Uh, himself. There was probably a paradox in there, but Kyuubi thought it was probably best that he didn't spend too much time dwelling on it, in case he set something off.

Kyuubi yawned, revealing the enormous canines that seemed to be forever showing in a maddened grin. He had twelve years before the kid he was sealed in would start causing trouble, he could afford to take a nap.

And if things didn't work out, well, he'd just try again next time, and then he'd be sure to get it right!

…The end?