The Cubey

-Disclaimer: The Naruto franchise is the intellectual property of Masashi Kishimoto. Credit is given to each author who has previously submitted a work that uses this concept.

-Summary: Kurama never quite got over his accident in sealing. Or under or around it, for that matter.

-Notes: A kickstart to my renovation campaign with a longer, hopefully more entertaining rewrite of one of my more successful oneshot endeavors.

With the formal schtick out of the way, let's roll in the funnies.

Naruto had been knocked unconscious before, but his chakra hadn't synchronised with that of his captive's sufficiently for an encounter in the mindscape to be possible.

Naruto didn't know what caused him to black out this time - in the past, culprits included fights with Sasuke, food laced with contaminants and an undisclosed incident involving using the Sexy Jutsu in front of a mirror - but he did know that his mindscape shouldn't be so full of such putrid liquid filth.

"Why the hell is my mind a sewer? I'm not even that old yet!" Naruto yelled into the warped chamber, receiving no response except for his own echo and a small grunt.

Barely distinguishing the sound past the dripping of pipes in the ambience, Naruto followed the grunt to it's source. There, he saw a giant cage containing...what the hell was that?

"Oh my god, this enclosure has a massive orange furry cat jammed against the side!" He yelled, excitedly. He approved of the colour.

There would have been a sound of shifting as Kurama moved to face Naruto, had there been any damned spare room in the cage to do so. Instead, he settled for a passive-aggressive response.

"I am not a cat, worthless mortal!"

Well, passive-aggressive for an almost literal incarnation of hatred and malevolence.

"Oh God, the cat speaks English!"

"I am a FOX."

Naruto walked around the cage and saw the characteristic nine tails pressed against the bars.

"Then why do you have nine tails? Foxes only have one tail." Naruto responded. Kurama was momentarily struck speechless by the implication that Naruto believed cats have nine tails and the accompanying revelation that he was even stupider than he looked.

"Because I am a DEMONIC fox!" A few moments of silent intense contemplation took place before Naruto responded.

"Oh, right. You're the Kyubi, aren't you?"

"The last damned horse crosses the line. Yes, the blasted Fourth Hokage sealed me in this ridiculously tiny cage!"

"Is that when you squared off against him?" Kurama could practically hear the wry smile.

"What was that?" Kurama snarled menacingly. Naruto just ignored the seething demon.

"I decided to make a pun based on the fact that you are a cube."

"I noticed. Your wit is incredible."

"I know, right?" The fact that he sounded sincere was the most annoying thing. An infuriated grunt answered back.

"This place is really stuffy. Are you dying of bardom?"

"These puns are terrible." Kurama snorted contemptuously.

"I figured I'd roll the dice, but one of them is locked up here."

"STOP THAT, YOU BUMBLING OAF!"

"Why so serious, Kyubi? You need to relax and take stock."

"Just...one...more...shot..."

"Am I cramping your style?" Almost instantly after that statement, the bars rattled as Kurama struggled to move to strike his captor. The cage did not give more than a millimetre, and he was forced to stand down.

"Shut up foolish mortal!" Most of the strength in Kurama's voice had ebbed away. He was clearly losing this contest of wills. None of his previous hosts were as pig-headed or

"Cubey?"

"What?"

"You're a box." That was the final straw. Instead of lashing out, constrained as he was, Kurama bust into tears, two comically oversized saline waterfalls falling from his crimson eyes between the bars and uniting with the sewage at Naruto's feet. Traumatised at seeing such an out-of-character display, Naruto reached out and poked Kurama, siphoning off a small amount of his chakra through his fingertip. Kurama didn't even acknowledge the contact.

"I think I broke him..."

The solution of tears and sewage continued to rise, and as they surpassed the orange-clad shinobi in height, Naruto tumbled about in the resulting waves. The colours of the mindscape slowly began to transmute into those of reality until Naruto was at last fully conscious again.

Swiping his throbbing forehead, Naruto's finger held a minute trickle of blood. Naruto pivoted his head to look at whatever had knocked him out. What was it? The moment came closer and closer until...

"A SQUIRREL?!"

Angry and humiliated by his apparent defeat at the hands of a small rodent, Naruto darted home, his face blazing red. Unknown to him, a plume of smoke then appeared at the location of the squirrel. As the smoke dissipated, there stood the smirking figure of Sasuke.

I have made a few edits and corrections and lengthened the story(if you can call it that). Seeing as the story is already stupid anyway, I added in the OOC Sasuke moment to tie in with the beginning.

I would also like to mention that I won't be continuing this work, so those people that are following this story, unfollow it.

More to the point, that review box below...

I think we understand eachother.