"Shitty whelp," snarled the rumbling voice in his head. "Do you want the power or not?"

Naruto grimaced in disgust; he hated the fox demon more than ever. Jiraiya's reasoning about the whole deal had made sense, of course: 'It's a permanent characteristic of yours - a tool for survival. You have to be able to summon and control its power at will.' He was firmly stuck in his life-long predicament; just crying about it would amount to less than nothing in terms of progress.

He stood serenely on a high branch deep inside the forests of Southern Fire Country, hands forming ninjutsu seals on his front. His chakra pool had been completely emptied, but the tap that would flood him with blazing crimson power was still somewhere out of his reach. Plunging further into the memories of his fight in the Wave Country, to each of the four times he released Kyubi in the Chuunin selection exam, and especially to his fight against Sasuke, he found something oddly distorted in those memories. It wasn't just him watching them, and it creeped him out good.

During his training with Jiraiya he had managed to push flickers of red chakra out - sweating profusely from the pure effort. It had never been as difficult, awkward, and painful to channel any chakra for him, whether it was his own or not. Gathering from the fox's comments whenever he tried to reach for the other power, he supposedly was making it hard on himself out of sheer stupidity. Naruto remembered how it hadn't saved Sasuke from going to the Sound, how it hadn't measured up to a single seal done by the Orochimaru freak. The demon had replied with observations on his personal inability to make use of its precious gifts, something it had made a point to run by him time and again over the months they'd spent training.

Naruto had to admit that, somewhere under all the scathing, bitter comments, the fur-brain did actually have a point to make. Did he want the demonic chakra, or not? He couldn't quite shake off the feeling that it was somehow wrong to use it.

The less emotion he put into it, the stronger he could feel... things seeping from the fox's chakra. Intense feelings, like being drowned in something as thick as butter. It was-- primitive rage. Naked, conspious, and overwhelming bloodlust. It was freedom on a much deeper level than he had ever imagined possible -- even in his nightmares dealing with total surrendering to the demon.

Naruto rather felt like he was standing back at the canyon edge again. He'd learned to summon Gamabunta by confronting the fox, but at what price did he use the power?

"Jump, whelp," came the growl.

Could he do it? Could he ease on the leash, and still remain in control? Ero-Sennin had told him to look for it, and that they wouldn't proceed in his training until he had learned some control.

"If you want to reach the skies, you start from the bottom of the deepest pit."

The power to surpass the Hokage...

He hated the fox, but he jumped.

Naruto woke up with a kickstart when a bucketful of cold water splashed on him.

"Oy!" he yelped angrily as he jumped up from the ground. "What the hell was that for?!"

Jiraiya considered him with an even stare, holding the empty, dripping bucket in his hands.

"You were sleeping during training."

"I was not!"

"What were you snoring on the ground then for?"

"Err..."

"Forget it. I felt the chakra," said Jiraiya with a change in his demeanor. He threw the bucket away in the general direction of the small campsite they were staying at. "How did you work it out?"

"Eh?" Naruto tried to shake the water off without much luck. Luckily it was a hot summer day out. He stopped his futile efforts sighing and asked curiously, "Work what out?"

"Work out whatever you were doing here," said Jiraiya, as if it was obvious that he was working something out.

"And what's this?" he asked with a frown, poking Naruto's left forearm.

Naruto's black T-shirt didn't cover his arms as well as his orange jumpsuit would have done, and staring at the marks appalled he wished he had worn the clothes with more fabric to cover him up. Something clicked in his mind, as a memory of falling down the abyss took him over. The words of the demon echoed in his ears, spoken with a feral, snarling voice, "As I'm bound to your body, your soul is now bound to me."

He was screwed.

"It's the Ninetails, isn't it?" Jiraiya asked the question he didn't want to think about.

Naruto nodded distractedly and plopped down sitting against a tree. He gathered his arms around his knees and hugged them.

"Are you all right?"

Was he all right?

"How the hell would I be alright!" snapped Naruto at him.

"Your eyes are slightly wild..." said Jiraiya, crossing his hands.

"It's your fault for never looking after me!"

Jiraiya raised an eyebrow at him.

"We've been through this many times already..."

"Was it that hard to just see me through this?" asked Naruto much more quietly, blanching inside. He turned to look away into the forest, pondering exactly what kind of training involved sending him alone against a demon that could wipe out a village with just one of its nine tails.

"Naruto," prompted Jiraiya with a firm tone.

He turned to look at the Legendary Sennin, standing tall in front of him. It was just sometimes, but Naruto figured the old pervert was actually capable of looking knowledgeable every now and then. It was just that he needed ten hours of pervercy for a single hour of normal behavior. He further reasoned out that Jiraiya wasted most of these rare hours while asleep.

Seeing he had gained the full attention of his disciple, Jiraiya said, "You have some serious misconceptions about this training, and life in general."

Naruto frowned his eyebrows.

"Eh?" he asked, not really sure what to make of it.

"Stop whining. These are things that no one can help you with," said Jiraiya, observing him carefully.

Naruto was bedazed. He definitely had not expected a response like this.

"What the... What the hell do you know!" he yelled back. What right did the old bastard have to talk to him like that? "Was it all right for me to get taken over by the demon!?"

Jiraiya's eyes flared. Gritting his teeth, he explained to his wayward student, "There's always danger in everything we do or leave undone. Deal with it."

Naruto couldn't really see where this was coming from at all. There was no reason for the old pervert to be angry at him. It was clearly the other way around, if anything! He toyed with the idea of Jiraiya wanting him to succumb to the demon, but scrapped that when he realized that he would have done that back when they first met. Or was it that Jiraiya had turned coat on him only now?

"Your don't look like you understood anything," said Jiraiya amusedly, and shook his head slightly.

"Listen," he continued with a lecturing tone, "if you think that you can survive in the world of shinobi with that mindset, you are seriously mistaken!"

Naruto looked at Jiraiya like he had grown a second head all of a sudden. The Sannin stared him down.

"In other words... If you had fallen to the Ninetails and died, then you wouldn't have been worth the time and effort."

Jiraiya kept a small pause to let the words sink in before continuing, "I'm not worried about the demon breaking out, since the Fourth's seal was excellent work. I should know - I trained him."

Naruto stared back letting go of his legs and crossing his hands, not saying anything.

"On the other hand, now that something did happen, you have the added experience of dealing with the demon on your own," he supplied calmly.

Naruto had to grudgingly admit that the old pervert had a point too. What was it with everyone making sense lately?

"You train so that you can function in the worst of situations. I had full trust in you pulling through this without dying, and you preserved, bringing back a seal too."

Naruto gripped his left forearm tightly against his body. He looked down at it; there were some kind of shapes covering most of the skin between his elbow and wrist. Another mark he now had on his body, without asking for even one.

"So, will you let me look at it now, or do we need to continue the lecture?" asked Jiraiya.

A/N: A little bit of a fic set during the timejump. Written sometime when part 2 had only a few chapters out. I thought it was an overdone theme already back then.