Prologue: Innocence

If Naruto could do his life over again...he would. If he knew back then to what he knew now, he would done certain things a lot differently. First off, he would have trained harder back in the academy years, hell he would have started training better before then, so his senseis would have taken him more seriously to begin with. He would have paid attention to other certain details - like how despite being sweet and beautiful Hinata was, she had watched/stalked him for YEARS and her being in love with him for the longest time, that NO ONE bothered to tell him about. Seriously, how anyone expected him to know what signs to look for in a very timid girl that actually LIKED him was pretty stupid on their part. Man did Naruto felt like such a baka for not seeing for how things really were or how Sakura was really a bitch that would betray him in a heartbeat for Sasuke's affections. He should have listened to that pain in the ass, Pervy-Sage about giving up on the traitor as well, save himself from that pain. He would have done many things differently, but as they say, hindsight is 20/20. Man it really did bite him in the ass, yeah he made a lot of good choices following his nindo, bad ones too, but the stupid choices - especially the one he just made, are gonna haunt him for quite some time. Next time someone tells him not to touch the strange glowing object, he's gonna stay the fuck away from it.

The mission had started pretty good. Tsunade had called him and Shikamaru to her office as she had a scouting mission for them to check out, a strange looking temple that was recently found underground 30 miles west of their village. It was only found due to team Kurenai coming home and found an unusual scent when passing through the area after their originally completed mission. Normally it would a different setup of people for this kind of mission, but those teams were needed elsewhere and team Kurenai had other duties to take care of.

So off went Naruto and Shikamaru, not knowing what they would find or what was going to happen because one fox got too curious.

33333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333

Chapter 1: DON'T TOUCH THAT NARUTO!

Konoha Front Gate:

It was early, about six am in the morning. The morning mist that day had yet to disappear with the early light. Standing there was Naruto in his new black and orange tracksuit, waiting for his lazy partner to meet up with him so they can get a move on. It had been about eight months since Naruto had come back, he has changed quite a bit since three years previously travelling and training with the toad sage did wonders on his mental and physical health. Although with the toad sage's death only the month prior, Naruto had managed to do things that his teacher was proud of, like how Naruto and his team were able to saved Gaara, and understand Naruto's frustrations like when Naruto had failed to bring back Sasuke for the second time. Since then things had not been going too well with his team, Sakura has been more temperamental since they fail that mission, becoming slowly more inclined to violence against her teammates and Kakashi is more or less doing as he had been before Naruto left for his training trip. Although he occasionally tries to help Naruto with his training but that damn bastard had a habit of not being very clear on what he wanted Naruto to do.

"What does he mean by 'I still need a better foundation.' Damn it, Ero-sannin worked that out already, he said so too, damn it!" Naruto ranted quietly to himself, it was beyond frustrating that Kakashi-sensei would either ignore him or would almost purposely be vague as some weird attempt to make Naruto think harder on his own. For crying out loud if Naruto could figure it out on his own, he wouldn't be asking for the copy nin's help, pervy-sage wasn't too impressed by Kakashi lack of effort either. Unfortunately the sage died before he could talk to the copy nin about his piss poor teaching methods, Naruto still felt the effects of that loss heavily, even though he tried to not show the people around him just how bad it actually was. As the sun rose higher he noticed a figure walking towards him, as it got closer he could see the slouching shoulders, the slow gait of the walk, the Chunin flak vest, the mesh net under his black shirt and pants, with his hair up in his normal pineapple fashion.

"Yo, man mornings are so troublesome" yawned a tired Nara as he met up with his mission partner, scratching the back of his head, "So you know where we are supposed to be heading towards that strange underground temple and explore for the science team make sure there aren't any trap or missing Nins hiding in the grounds. Got it Naruto?" Shikamaru questioned.

Naruto nodded "Yeah, yeah, no worries. We'll make sure it's all good for the white coats!" giving Shikamaru a big thumbs up with his foxy grin before turning around and headed through the gates to take for their destination. Shikamaru shook his head and chased after the blonde speeding ahead of him, also wanting to finish the mission quickly. As Shikamaru chased after his partner, he couldn't help but notice the changes the other one had gone through, from the obvious physical growth even if Naruto was still one of the shorter guys, to the massive change in not only his skills but his mental growth as well. While people like his current partner's stubborn team still refuse for whatever reason to see the changes, Shikamaru wasn't blind, and he could see how with proper training and just someone with authority paying attention to the hyperactive blonde made a huge impact on him as a ninja and as a person. Naruto as a child even, Shikamaru had always found to a bright and warm kind of person, even though he always dreamed big he never let anyone or thing break him of this confidence. Even when most of that time he couldn't back it up but it never stopped him from trying again and again and again. Shikamaru while wasn't gay per say he could honestly understand why Hinata has not given up yet on Naruto someday returning her feelings, hell if it weren't the fact that Hinata was such a sweet girl when she wasn't shy Shikamaru might have tried at getting the blonde's attention assuming Naruto didn't freak out right away as well. Shikamaru could never bring himself to tell the blonde about either his own crush or Hinata's, as he didn't want to things to get weird, but even if Hinata never did say something, Shikamaru fully intends to keep his feelings to himself, since he wants to stay as close to the blonde he can get away with. Temari is a good but troublesome girlfriend, if she knows about his feelings towards his friend, she never said anything, granted of course he never said anything to suggest that but also both respected and afraid of her temper too to ever not give her the best he could. It's just unfortunate for her that Nara's generally chooses partners that can inspire the lazy geniuses, while she definitely is able to grab his attention for a short while Naruto has always been able to keep it most of the time.

It was a nice day in the forest the sky was mostly clear with the few occasional cloud to make it look interesting, about two hours later they found the tunnel like cave that would lead them to the temple, the tunnel was thankfully only a mile and half long, couple feet high and wide. It only took them 15 minutes to ninja run through the tunnel to large cavern with the dirt path they were following into cobblestone path that led to a stairway down towards one of the weirdest looking place they had ever seen.

The temple, if you would call it that, wasn't very large in fact for a temple it was a bit on the small side. The roof of the building had a faded but smooth orange with a white strip around the edging, with what looked to be a two colored ball on the center of it. The ball's top half was red with the bottom half being white with a little white button in the middle, the walls were also white in color. The doors, if that was what they were looking at, looked to be made of solid glass. Naruto looked at Shikamaru, wondering what he wanted to do.

"Troublesome, Naruto make some shadow clones and scout the area before we try the front doors. I want to know if there are any other entrances, traps or possible clues to what this place is. But keep your real body here to relay the info as it comes in. Got it?" ordered Shikamaru, this place set him on edge, but didn't have enough clues yet to as why that was. Naruto nodded and with a shout of his famous phrase, four squads worth of clones popped to life and scattered to see if they could find anything, about 10 minutes later the clones started popping to send back their findings to the original.

"Hm, well it seems the place on the outside has a large multipurpose terrain in the back for either training or raising certain types of animals. Although I'm guessing a bit of both since there is a small arena and the rest of it is many different terrains further back. There is also only one other door and it leads to the backyard, I guess you could call it that, but there doesn't seem to be much in the animal life, just lots of plants and the like. The outside also seems too overgrown too," reported the blonde genin, looking to Shikamaru on what to do next. Shikamaru squatted down and took a few minutes to process what Naruto gave him, it didn't help that uneasy feeling he had been having about this place and the longer they were here the worst the feeling got. He shook his head, there wasn't much he can do about it, their mission was to see if this place was safe for the "white coats" as Naruto called them, to come down and study this place, he will just have to be cautious and make sure he and Naruto come back in one piece because the Log Gods know how their buxom Hokage will react if something happened to the not so dopey blonde were to get hurt or worse.

Decision made Shikamaru stood up and turned to Naruto, " Alright make another four squads worth of clones, one to cover each entrance and the other two to patrol the area, I don't want any surprises or trouble if we can avoid it, we will do the inside ourselves to avoid accidentally blowing up the place or set off alarms. We will do this slowly and thoroughly, one room at a time and keep in sight of each other. Let's go!"

Once the clones were made and given their orders, the real Naruto and Shikamaru went to the glass doors to try and get inside. Imagine their surprise as they stepped up to the doors, the glass doors suddenly slid opened wide with a soft swoosh releasing stale air and bringing some fresher air in. Quietly and lightly they stepped in together, triggering on the automatic lights, both ninjas froze when that happened, once they were sure that they didn't set anything off, they both relaxed slightly and started to take in their surroundings. The first room they entered looked like some kind of waiting room, there were chairs lined up for people to sit in, there were some desks with what looked like a computer with a phone connect to it, and a big reception desk straight in front of the doors for greeting people and the like. Off to the corner look like to be what Shikamaru could only guess at was some kind of mix between a phone and computer, there also appeared to be another computer that was attached to a tube that was also attached to a pod of some sort, there was more than one set of these machines too.

Shikamaru looked intently before turning his head to look at Naruto, for some reason getting the impression it was important, Naruto just looked around in awe of the place at first, then as he started to explored his surroundings, Naruto was looking rather silly trying to watch where he stepped but was still more interested in the new place. Shikamaru's warning flags stayed the same, but nothing had happened yet to warrant them to leave, but enough to still keep his guard up, despite the place being old as indicted by the stale air and plant growth outside. The inside however was very different, the chairs that had cushions on for comfort weren't rotten in the slightest, and the floor and the counters were dust free. The place looked clean, like someone had been taking care of the place or the structure was sealed air tight before they activated the doors to let the new air in.

"Naruto, be on your guard, this place is way too clean and nice looking, in any case let's look deeper in, man this place is gonna be troublesome. I just know it" the lazy Nara stated, Naruto nodded and follow Shikamaru's lead, down a hallway, that led to several rooms that looked like for sleeping or scarily enough were what they could only describe as sex rooms, only because of Naruto's experience with brothels he was able to identify some of the furniture in the room. Both guys blushed and searched those rooms quickly and moved on to other ones. They found a few rooms that looked like to be medical exam rooms with some weird equipment, but didn't touch anything seeing as how they knew nothing of such stuff, that would be the Medical and Science R&D departments. As they got further in, they found the end of the hallway led to stairs deeper in, the guys looked at each other before nodding, Naruto created a clone to go down first to check this out for them. Not long after the clone popped, Naruto gave Shikamaru the all clear sign, Shikamaru nodding then headed down the stairs with Naruto to watch their backs. At the bottom of the stairs there was another long hallway but this time there were only three doors.

The first door on the left was locked this time, but didn't keep our skilled ninja out, it took them a about 10 seconds to pick the lock then slowly opened the door with kunai raised, only to realize that they found some kind of storage room. A deep room filled to the brim of tiny red and white balls about an inch to an inch and a half wide. They actually looked like the giant red and white ball on the roof outside this very strange place but in small scale and there were thousands of them.

"Um, why do these little balls look like the big one outside, what is this place?" questioned the blonde, looking at the shadow user for help. Shikamaru sighed, "At least he hasn't touched anything, and I don't wanna know what's in these things" thinking to himself but says to Naruto "I think it's some kind of storage place, there probably a couple thousand of these little balls if not more, but we won't open one, that's for the other groups to decide, so don't touch them okay Naruto, man what a pain this place is" muttering to himself. Naruto just smiled sheepishly and put down the small ball that he had picked up gently on its place holder, something about this room just screamed at Naruto's senses.

They then left the room to see what the last two doors also held. They went next into the door directly across from them. In this one, it looked to be a R&D room, there were more of those balls that looked half finished, and they were also bigger than the storage room one, the guys spread out again to see what else they could find in the room. They found a couple small mainly red but a few other colored rectangular metal boxes that opened easily but wasn't working, there also some that weren't complete either. Searching the drawers proved fruitful as they found the plans for the balls and the weird metal box. The room also had some computers that again looked weird almost more advanced than the world currently had. There were again many other tools and machines that neither ninja could identify, the two separated to search more of the room drawers as there were many filing cabinets and desks filled with different kinds of research and plans. Naruto started to feel a weird pulling sensation, like where he Needed to be was in the last room they haven't looked into yet.

"Hey Shikamaru, I'm gonna check out that last room, ok?" asked Naruto, Shikamaru made a distracted shooing motion, he had found what look to be an old journal written by someone named Dr. Shikamaru Stroak. After finding many papers that either spoke of this man's importance to whatever this place was or how he was a foremost researcher on some kind of creature, the journal is self wasn't very important looking, it was actually rather plain looking but for some reason Shikamaru's warning flags that had been slowly receding reared back up again with a vengeance. He didn't know why this book set him on such a hard edge but as he opened and started to read it, the sinking feeling in his stomach got steadily worse, he recognized the writing, "What the FUCK?! THIS IS MY HANDWRITING!" Shikamaru shouted within his mind. If that wasn't bad enough as he read, he begin to notice something, the journal wasn't written like other journals, this wasn't written like someone was retelling their day, this was someone telling him what was going to be happening soon, panicking Shikamaru quickly flicked through the other pages only to see that they were blank.

"What the hell is going on here? I don't understand, only two pages aren't blank and I don't understand half or what is written here...wait what's in the other room? What does that have to do with Naruto?" Shikamaru paled greatly, Naruto said he went to the other room to check it out, he then turned running out of the room to stop Naruto before something bad happened to the blonde, he managed to just reach the second door when a boom and a bright light started to shine.

Meanwhile:

While Shikamaru had been studying the journal, Naruto turned to leave only to have his attention quickly stolen by a small bright orange colored box, grabbing and pocketing it on impulse as he left to check the next room, this door was also locked but Naruto got in no problem. The lights like the rest of the building automatically turned on, this part didn't bother Naruto, it was the sudden faint humming that started when he came into the room. Naruto paused at the door threshold waiting to see if anything else would happen, when the humming continued softly but nothing else changed Naruto slowly moved into the room looking at what this area held. There were more machines of various shapes and sizes some looking like the few computers he has seen on his travels with Jiraya, when the man was actually working and not his damn peeping habits. Slowly making his way through the room that mostly more of what he had already seen throughout the building, the humming got louder as he came closer to the back. When he reached the back he found that two machines were actually running, a computer that was running some kind of program that Naruto couldn't make heads or tail with, it also didn't help that is was quickly changing the text and there was a large tube like structure that was blinking lights and was the main noise maker in the room. Suddenly the computer made a short series of beeps and the tube made responding beeps and a door abruptly slid open showing the empty insides. Naruto jumped back a bit not expecting that but after nothing happened for a moment, Naruto poked his head near the door confirming that way inside, shaking his head at the strangeness of this place Naruto turned around to go find Shikamaru only to freeze at Shikamaru's panicked shout. His pause would be his undoing as the moment the machine behind him exploded to life, a bright light blinded him and something immediately grabbed him pulling him into the machine.

"NARUTO WHERE ARE YOU?! WHAT DID YOU DO?...DON'T TOUCH THAT NARUTO!" Screamed Shikamaru, now in full panic mode, blindly searching for the blonde in the white room, only to hear a sound he never thought he would hear.

"HELP! SHIKAMARU! IT"S DRAGGING ME IN!" Naruto screamed back in absolute terror. Somehow Shikamaru managed to find Naruto's outstretched hand and hung on as tightly as he could trying to save his teammate desperately. At first Shikamaru thought he was gonna be able to save his friend only for the something unexpected to happen, something that would haunt him for years to come, red chakra that normally stayed dormant in his foxy friend burst out of Naruto's body, grabbed his wrists, burning them and shoved Shikamaru back. The bright suddenly engulfed Naruto completely from view and then slowly made him vanish from his sight, Naruto still shouting at Shikamaru for help. The light the retreated into the strange tube like device that was about as tall as he was, Shikamaru collapsed on the ground, unable understand what just happened.

As he sat there dazed, the machine softly started humming again only to explode in that white light from before with more chakra from the Kyuubi, that reached out to Shikamaru wrapping him up in their combined light, entering him, changing him from the inside. When the strange light show was done it then slowly put him back down on the ground, looking very much the same as before but now he had two strange tattoos on his wrists where the Kyuubi's chakra had burned him. On his left wrist was a small red fox with nine tails that wrapped themselves almost possessively the wrist with writing that said "Eternity" on it, on the right wrist it was a small picture of the balls they saw earlier with also some writing on it that said "Professor" across the red top part. The machine stopped humming and went quiet once more, Shikamaru just barely managed to look at his wrists before passing out. It would be sometime before Shikamaru woke up to truly find his friend missing and the consequences of this mission would have on the whole world.

Back with Naruto:

All Naruto could do was scream, this white light was fighting with his chakra and that of the Fox's own energies, as it surrounded him and entered his body. It felt like it was following both his blood and chakra systems, invading every part of his being, the worse of the pain seemed to be in for places, his head, spine, the core of his chakra network at his stomach, but the last one was probably the worst one if he had presence of mind to focus, was in his crotch. He was both freezing and burning from the inside out, he could feel the Fox trying desperately trying to say and do something but he couldn't focus beyond that, not even when Naruto entered his own mindscape did the pain stop, if anything it felt even worse. The pain tore through his body as it felt like he was being stretched and pulled apart while this freezing burning feel continued. It felt as though a small eternity happened as Naruto had no sense of time or even of self but as suddenly as it had happened the pain stopped and Naruto finally was able to blissfully lose consciousness. The fox however now and truly awake, it couldn't understand just what the hell happened this damn kit just had to get himself into all sorts of trouble. It could also feel all the pain the kit went through, hell it could barely stand it and it didn't have a body to hurt none the less it fucking hurt! It had surged it's own power through the kit just to try dampened the absolute worst part of the pain and even that barely kept the kit alive, but it was almost worth it in the end, that strange light had done something to the kit, brought some things to its attention that was never noticed, something that had been done to the boy many years ago, probably in the first few years actually when it was most sound as sleep. Lazily it continued to send trickles of its power through the kit, feeding the body the energy needed for the repairs, allowing the fox to fully get a feel of its kit for the first time, the fox growled deeply not happy about the information it was receiving. This explained a great many things but also brought up a few other questions as well, there was also a moment, just one where it could have had its freedom, being rather disgusted and done with humans in general, this one being rather unimpressive compared to its earlier containers until it received some very important news that forced the fox to change its mind about leaving the kit. Now to wait for the kit to wake and see will happen next.

33333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333

So yeah it has been a rather long time since I last wrote, so I had started rereading my story only to hate where I was going with it and didn't like the pokegirls I had originally picked so I'm redoing it. I had liked most of what I had before in this chapter but I felt it was too short and I could add more to it so I did. Let's see if my new attempt will work out better. Laters