Naruto's consciousness slowly floated up from a chaotic darkness.
He opened his eyes in a daze. Before him was a space like a sewer—cold, damp, and carrying a faint smell of rust.
He was lying in shallow water. The surface just covered the backs of his hands, yet he could not feel the water's real touch, only a chill flowing across his skin.
"Where is this—"
Naruto propped himself up and looked around.
He recognized it at once.
This was the sealing space inside his body.
The place where that big fox was locked up.
Back when he had trained with the Pervy Sage, Jiraiya, he had come in a few times, and every time he had ended up bickering and arguing with that bad-tempered big fox.
That fox always glared down at him with those hateful eyes, saying ugly things like "brat" and "Jinchuriki"
"Go to hell."
Naruto stood up, and rings of ripples spread across the water.
He looked down at himself. He was still wearing that orange tracksuit. This was not a dream—his consciousness had been pulled in.
"Hey, brat!"
A somewhat deep, buzzing voice sounded behind Naruto, carrying anger it could not suppress.
Naruto turned around.
The tall, heavy iron gate of the Eight Trigrams Sealing Style still stood at the end of the space. A huge talisman was pasted on the door, and chains hung from all sides of the frame, sinking into the water.
Behind the iron gate, within that even deeper darkness, a pair of scarlet vertical pupils stared fixedly at him through the gaps in the bars.
It was the Nine-Tails.
The huge orange-red fox locked inside was crouching in the depths of the cell.
But when Naruto looked closely, he almost failed to hold back his laughter.
On the Nine-Tails' once-imposing