Naruto : Struggle Of Childhood

Acting

Naruto was not in the best of spirits when Gamakichi returned. He was thinking about what had happened earlier. Had he not been held back, Naruto would have killed that Sound guy. What was worse was the sick feeling that somewhere he would have gotten a savage pleasure out of it. The thought of it made his stomach hurt.

Every time he closed his eyes, Naruto could see the eyes that he had seen when he was younger looking out at him, and he could feel its frustration. It had wanted to kill that guy. It hadn't been particularly discriminate. If Sasuke had been there, Naruto might have attacked him too. It was possible that after a while, he would get into such a rage that it wouldn't matter to him who he was fighting as long as someone suffered.

He stared into the fire that Sasuke had made, wondering if maybe they would be better off if he left them. If he could snap like that then...

"If you do very much more brooding, I'm going to punch you again," Sasuke's voice cut in, "And this time, I'm going to mean it."

Naruto, who was Sasuke's usual sparring partner, knew very well what that meant.

"Or, if Sasuke doesn't beat that out of you," Sakura smirked, "I could use Tsunade's method for when Sasuke started to get broody about his family."

Naruto also knew what that meant, and he had not interest whatsoever in being force-fed every sweet thing that Sakura could find (in this forest, that might kill Naruto by itself) and then hung up from a branch in his underwear for all the world to see.

"Guys," Naruto mumbled, "You saw it didn't you?"

"Yeah," Sasuke muttered, "You'd think that Kyuubi would do more damage wouldn't you? Gaara's always got his sand, and I was expecting a little more of a reaction when you finally lost it. Truthfully, it's a surprise that you didn't kill that bandaged guy in the first move."

"What?!" Naruto was shocked.

Sakura smiled a little nervously.

"Well, Naruto, ever since you told us about Kyuubi, Sasuke and I have been researching about it and its abilities. Hinata had guessed that your father had tried to make the seal as beneficial to you as he could, but there was only so much that he could do. We thought that it might be a good idea to know what the Kyuubi could do so that we knew what to expect if you even tapped into its power."

Naruto had never really researched the powers of his...tenant. He really didn't want to acknowledge that the thing was even there, but now he wished that he had thought about something other than his own issues with being a Jinchuuriki.

"What does it do?" Naruto had to ask.

"According to most sources?" Sasuke asked, "Anything it feels like. It's the most powerful of all of them, and it's probably the most intelligent as well. It really can plot, not like Sandy Wandy, who just seems to scream about killing people. Kyuubi plots things out in advance. That's probably why it didn't force more of its Chakra into you. It wanted to get you used to the feeling so that it could push more and more into you before you really noticed the difference."

"And that would do what? Relieve stress?" Naruto asked, "I don't see what Fuzzy Wuzzy's getting out of that."

"Neither do I, but I think Jiraiya-baka has a pretty good idea," Sakura said thoughtfully.