One Hour Later
"Good ol Kakashi." I sigh to myself as I make my way back towards my room. "It was nice chatting like that with someone, he's the only one here I can do that with. Shikamaru would just brush me off, Naruto would ask to go spar or something like that, Anko would attempt to get me to go after Ino again and Ino is... well she's Ino. Probably try and tempt me to go back to Konoha? That sounds about right, assuming she's done gawking at the clothes."
I quickly look left then right. I'm alone in the hallway.
"I suppose now is as good a time as any to go see what this unlocks." I reach into my right hand pocket and wrap my hand around the Hexagonal Crystal.
"OI!" Naruto's voice echoes down the long hallway. As I look at him I can't help but think he looks a bit panicked. Huh, that's weird. "Alvarcus there you are!"
"Guess I'll do that later. Not like it's going anywhere." I release the Hexagonal Crystal and give him a cheery wave. "What's up?"
"Ino said that you're leaving!" He blurts out. "You can't leave! You haven't said goodbye yet!"
I sigh and massage my temples. "You ran out the second she said I'm leaving, didn't you? You didn't stick around to hear her finish and say that I'm leaving tomorrow?"
"Oh. Uh. Maybe?" He smiles at me innocently as he rubs the back of his head.
"Naruto you moron." I playfully insult him with a friendly smile on my face. "Yeah I'm leaving but not until tomorrow. I wanted to say goodbye to everyone. Plus I'm not done ransacking the Palace to see if there's any other furniture I want here. I don't know what to get next, perhaps a nice dining room set? Er. Uh. You didn't hear that. Forget I said anything."
"What?" He asks me in confusion.
"Exactly." I am quick to move on before he connects the dots and tells Koyuki who exactly took a nice set of the Palace's fine china. Definitely wasn't me. "So did you need anything? You know besides demanding that I say goodbye, we've covered that."
"I've got a few questions if you have the time." Naruto lets some of the innocent go lucky persona he has fade. Whatever he wants to talk about it's serious.
"I'll hear them. Can't promise I can answer." I tell him. "Is this something we can do here or should we go somewhere more private?"
"Definitely more private." He decides after a moment of consideration.
"We can use my room." I offer. "I've got a handful of sound dampening seals left over from when I soundproofed my room at Oto. We can use those for an extra layer of privacy."
"Sweet. Lead the way."
I do just that.
...
Alvarcus's Palace Room
"Dude. Your's is bigger than mine." Those are the first words out of Naruto's mouth once he sees the room.
"Thank you Naruto." I'm totally going to fuck with him. "But keep in mind that size isn't everything, it's also how well you can use it. Though size does help."
"Aw shit." Naruto groans. "I did what you do."
"Yep. Phrasing." I plop down on my bed and sprawl out on it. Good thing Ino got all of her clothes out of here otherwise there would hardly be any room. "So what's up buddy? You had questions?"
"Yeah I've got a couple." He sits down in a chair facing me.
"They about Sureddo?" I bluntly ask him. "That's the Jiongu's name in case you forgot."
"No. I've decided to handle my extra voice in my own way. Yours works for you but I don't think it will work the same way for me." Naruto shares with me. "The Jiongu and the Kyuubi are two very different beings, but you were right. I've been looking at him as a monster instead of as a person. Even if he's a giant tsunami causing fox he still has feelings too. I just need to connect with him."
"How's that going for you?" I curiously ask. If he's already starting to work on lessening Kurama's hatred then that's great, he could befriend him that much quicker.
"Well… right now he's screaming at me to kill you. So there's that." Naruto weakly admits. "He's spewing some bullshit about asserting myself as the alpha male, that you're a threat to me. I know what the real reason is, he really doesn't like that you know his name."
"Don't you dare ask me what it is." I cut in before Naruto can do something stupid like that. "I don't want another episode."
"Me either." Naruto wholeheartedly agrees. "I didn't want to talk about our respective voices in our heads, I wanted to talk about Spider."
"The Spiders?" I question him. "Sure I'll tell you some stuff about them but I'm going to keep most of it secret. They're my Summons and I don't want what they can do to be public information."
"No, you misheard me." Naruto corrects me. "Not the Spiders. Spider. The one who let you sign the Contract."
Oh. Spider. My secret alias that I'm using to pass information to Jiraiya so he can pass it to Tsunade and Konoha. I didn't expect this.
"Ah." Is my informative answer.
"Yes. What's his real name?" Naruto asks with a lot of interest. I have his full attention.
"If he's kept it from you then I won't be the one to reveal it." Although I did just tell Kakashi that I have an Elemental Nations spanning spy network. It wouldn't be too hard to connect the dots. I'm going to bank on the idea that Kakashi wants to avoid Naruto because he's ashamed he didn't do more for him when he was younger.
"Alright, I figured that wasn't going to work." Naruto leans forward in the chair. "Instead I'll ask this, is he a good person? Is he trustworthy?"
"Is he a good person?" No. I'm not a good person. Even if I've turned over a new leaf I'm still not good, yet neither am I bad. I'm in the middle. "I wouldn't call him a bad person but then again he's not good. He's more good than bad though it is close. Is he trustworthy? Absolutely, as long as your goals and his line up and you return his trust. He can be very vengeful at times so don't give him a reason to turn his ire onto you."
"Hmm." Naruto ponders deep in thought for a moment.
"Any particular reason you ask?" I give him a question of my own.
"Not really." Naruto shrugs. "I wanted to compare him to Jiraiya and see how different the two are. No one is really open with me except for you. I can ask you anything and the worst response I'll get is 'I don't want to answer that.' You're honest with me. You don't judge me. You don't scorn me. It's really nice to have someone like that."
Now that, ladies and gentlemen, is a damn good cover story. He provided a plausible reason for the question then brought up something that most definitely will lead me away from prying further into the reasoning behind asking that specific question. Naruto Uzumaki, you're a lot better at being a shinobi than I gave you credit for. I won't be making that mistake again.
"You do the same for me." I easily respond to him. "We've talked about our inner voices - and damn is that accurate - with each other a lot. I may act like it's easy to open up about Sureddo but sometimes it's not. You've opened up to me about the Kyuubi. Frankly we're the only people who know what it's like that we can talk to. Sure there are other jinchuuriki but neither of us can really talk to them, even then they might outright refuse to talk about it with me. I'm not a jinchuuriki, I just have a freaky thread being that speaks to me. It's similar but not the same."
"True but it's still hard to connect with other jinchuriki even if I am one." Naruto admits. "Gaara and I shared a heart to heart talk once, but that was more based on our childhood and dealing with the scorn of being a jinchuriki instead of dealing with the Bijuu themselves. You're the only one that I've opened up to about the Kyuubi himself."
"Same." I give him a slight nod in thanks. "Sure I've mentioned some stuff about being a Host of the Jiongu to some people but I've never really talked about what it's like to deal with it to anyone else. At best they know it's a bloodthirsty thread being that speaks to me. That's it."
"Yeah." Naruto says as a silence falls between us.
It stretches for a good twenty seconds as we both simply sit there in contentment being in the company of someone who understands.
"So wanna go spar?" Naruto breaks the silence.
"I knew you'd ask me that." I groan out. "No. I want to relax. I've got to leave tomorrow, I can't do that if I'm tired."
Jokes on him, I don't get tired. I just really don't want to spar.
"Aw. You're no fun." He pouts then rises up. "I'll go bug Shikamaru some more then. That kid is so damn lazy, it's fun to try to get him to do things. Ino and I have a little game going to see who can get him to do more."
"Go have fun." I toss Shikamaru to the wolves. Better him than me. "I'll just be here relaxing."
"Cool. See ya." Naruto leaves.
"Or I'll be seeing just what exactly this unlocks." I reach into my pocket once more to hold the Hexagonal Crystal. "Can't forget about that."
...
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