"Dad?! Dad!"

"Nngh... stop yell'n', Bor'to..."

"Dad! Wake up! What the hell is going on?!"

Boruto began to shake his father's barely-conscious form, as he laid across the floor in what the younger Uzumaki could only assume was some sort of cave structure.

It was dark, it was wet, it was cold, it was quiet...

...it was terrifying, if he was honest.

It was surprisingly dark in the expanseless cave - although not completely pitch black. He could make out silhouettes and figures in the dark, but that was the extent of it.

Just him and his suddenly very pale and sweaty father, who was collapsed on the ground, not unlike the piles of rocks that littered the rather decently sized cavern they were inhabiting.

A panic began to settle in his gut - a feeling that he had honestly never felt before. Well, not to this extent, perhaps. But it was all so new, so fresh - so gutwrenchingly horrid. He began to pound on his father's chest weakly, eyes wide in the darkness, breaths coming out in short and pained gasps.

"Dad... please..."

Naruto groaned on the floor, curling into a shivering ball underneath the pelting from his son's fists.

With an exasperated shout, Boruto turned and kicked his father in the gut before turning and frantically looking around the dark cave for signs of life, an exit - anything.

But from what he could see, they were completely trapped.

And he had no way to know which way to start to dig, if it came to that.

"Ughh..."

Boruto blinked in the darkness, and shot back around to look at the groaning figure of his father shaking on the floor, eyes pressed shut like vices.

"Dad?" he asked again worriedly, and he let out a sigh of relief when the Seventh Hokage relaxed a bit upon hearing his voice.

"Boruto..." the man grunted in pain, attempting to sit up from the rocky floor. "What... what the hell's going on?"

"I was about to ask you the same thing!" the boy panicked, quickly sitting down over his father, waiting for him to get up and explain just what the hell they were doing inside of some creepy-ass cave.

Naruto let out a rather pained groan as he attempted to sit up, before nearly collapsing back onto the ground. He would have, too, were it not for Boruto grabbing him and holding him steady.

"Dad? DAD! What the HELL is going on?!" he shook, watching as his father's face grimaced in pain from the action.

"Not so rough, Boruto," Naruto hissed, face cringing in different directions. "I don't know what's happening, but my chakra system's... all out of... wack..."

He struggled to spit out the last few words, and began to clutch at his stomach as he did so. "Yeah... definitely... not good..."

After a few tense moments where Naruto simply sat there shaking, and Boruto was merrily glad his father was awake again.

"...Dad?" Boruto pressed again, worried that the deafening silence they were drenched in signaled his father's slip back into unconsciousness.

Naruto's eyes suddenly shot open, and they darted all across the cavern: the floor, the ceiling, the form of his own slumped body lying underneath him, his son's terrified expression on his face.

Boruto reeled in shock at what he saw.

"Wh-what the hell..." he stuttered, jumping to his feet as he stared at the place on his father's face that had always housed a pair of loving, emotional, powerful blue eyes.

Now, however, they were blood red.

Instead of the usual black pupil floating amicably across a sea of cerulean, there were two onyx slits running vertically through crimson irises, which were still darting across their strange environment with a confused gleam.

And they were glowing.

Finally, they settled on him, and Boruto had to resist the urge to flinch, run away, and hide.

The eyes immediately widened when they saw the amount of fear that he was leaking like a running faucet.

"...Boruto?" Naruto asked faintly, moving to get up, before he groaned in pain, and doubled over himself with a wheeze. He raised his head to meet his son's eyes once again, who hadn't moved an inch.

"...Dad... Your eyes..."

Naruto blinked, granting the boy some brief respite from the terrifying aura those... things were oozing.

"What about them?"

"They're... they're red..." he muttered quietly, as if afraid that speaking too loud would end his life.

Naruto blinked, and then cringed again, this time with a barely-suppressed groan.

"Makes sense," he grunted out, and Boruto just blinked.

'What the hell is that supposed to mean?'

"Where the hell are we?" Naruto suddenly asked, interrupting Boruto's shaken train of thought. "This isn't where I Shunshined us at all..."

"Wait, so you did send us here?" Boruto asked, a familiar frown creeping its way back onto his face.

Naruto just grimaced again - although the Uzumaki heir couldn't tell this time whether it was out of pain, or out of annoyance.

He got his answer pretty quickly, however. "No, I didn't; what the hell did I literally just say?"

Naruto winced when he saw his son shrink back from him at that. "Sorry," he muttered, turning his gaze to the floor of the cavern once again. "I get a little mean when I'm in pain like this..."

"Hmph," Boruto grunted in affirmation, still refusing to meet his father's gaze.

Naruto made to stand up, and actually managed to accomplish it, albeit shakily. He leaned an arm across the far wall of the cave, and closed his eyes again in concentration, beads of cold sweat running down his body.

"Why the hell is this happening..." he muttered to himself angrily, before slowly opening his eyes to check on his son. "Are you okay?" He asked a little embarrassedly. "Sorry I didn't ask earlier. A little preoccupied at the moment, in case you couldn't tell..."

"I'm fine," Boruto mumbled, crossing his arms over his chest with the raise of his eyebrow. "What the heck is wrong with you, though?"

Naruto gave a single hollow laugh, before sliding back down the wall into a sitting position, a feeble hand held gingerly over his gut. "Wish I knew," he said with a pained smile. "Something's wrong with my chakra..."

"Chakra exhaustion?" Boruto asked tensely.

Naruto shook his head slowly, still looking off vaguely at nowhere in particular. "No... more like chakra overabundance... My body can't handle..."

Then, he snapped to attention, his vulpine eyes widening to their maximum potential, and he began to breathe shakily.

"Wh...what the hell? Why are all nine of you -"

Boruto raised an eyebrow, but quickly yelped in shock when his father's eyes shot up into his skull, and he slumped forward in unconsciousness.

"Dad? Dad! DAD?!"

Drip.

"Damn, Kurama, this place looks like shit."

"Would you shut your damn mouth! It's a hell of a lot better than what any of you had, that's for sure! At least I can move!"

Drip.

"Hmph! Well, you're the idiot that decided to stay locked up!"

"Grr..."

"Would you two cut it out!"

Drip.

The great Nine-Tailed Demon Fox grumbled something incoherent in discontent. "Damn raccoons," he muttered, slumping against the wall.

He took a cursory glance at his surroundings and had to admit that the massive sand priest was at least partially right - his current home was certainly a far cry from the lush and fruitful forests he remembered living in during his roaming days. The dark and gloomy sewage system that his jailor - well, former jailor - had for a mind left a lot to be desired.

He raised a paw out of the gooey layer of watery substance that coated the floor of his home with a scowl, and flicked off whatever residual moisture that had rooted itself in his fur with a quick shake, before sighing and looking around the rest of the room.

The cavernous cellar was certainly roomy enough, that was for sure. The entrance to the room - the one that Naruto came and went from, most likely to head to the other parts of his subconscious - was lit in a somewhat bright, sourceless, ethereal glow: but that was it. Whatever little amount of light that trickled out of the haze only went so far into Kurama's side of the cage, basking most of the expansive room in a dark, depressing shadow.

About one hundred feet from the small, human-sized hallway that stood at the head of the sewage hall hung a pair of massive, golden gates - open now, of course. Their massive forms laid pinned against the walls of his cage, somewhat signifying freedom.

Kurama sighed. He knew, deep down, that all he had to do was force a little against his container's body to be released, but that wasn't something he was willing to do anymore. Maybe once before, in the past - but not now. Certainly not after they had coexisted together, as friends, as comrades, for so long. Hell; what'd it been now, twenty years?

The fox rolled its eyes in thought. He was a massive chakra construct with a consciousness attached almost as an afterthought. He had no true perception of time. Well, no perception for a time change as minute as twenty measly years.

But still, his human friend - his only human friend clutched onto those figures with an iron grip. They meant something to him; so, in respect, they meant something to Kurama as well.

It was only fitting.

Still, the Nine-Tailed Fox contemplated busting out of his host the hard way, for no other reason than to punish him for whatever absolutely ridiculous stunt he had pulled this time.

With a sigh, he turned his attention further into the dark bowels of his home, and was met with the angry glares of eight other pairs of eyes.

He had known that some of his siblings' chakra resided within Naruto as a sign of good faith, of trust; but that was the extent of it.

It sure as hell wasn't enough to constitute the sealing of their entire beings into the boy, along with him.

But still, there they stood, angrily fuming at their loss of freedom once again.

The Eight-Tails shook its head in exasperation. "Look, if you two are going to fight all day, then wait until after we've figured out what the hell is going on, would you? I want to get back to Bee - that is, if he's still okay..."

"Yeah, just what the hell is going on here? Kurama! What did you do?" roared Son Gokuu in indignation, bashing on the ground with his massive apelike fists, sending blasts of water into the faces of his fellow tailed beasts.

"Knock it off!"

"Kurama! Answer the damn question!"

"Look, I didn't do anything! I should be asking all of you the same thing; what the hell are you doing in my jinchuuriki?!"

Sensing an exponential rise in tension, Gyuuki stepped in once again. "Look, it's obvious none of us understand what's going on, so why bother beating each other up over it?"

"Hmph," the fox grumbled, and was echoed by his other riled-up siblings.

But the Eight-Tailed Ox-topus wasn't quite finished. "Kurama, why don't you summon Naruto? He can help explain this."

Shukaku waggled his lone tail in agitation. "Hey, yeah! This has that brat's name written all over it!"

"Fine, fine, whatever," the Kyuubi mumbled, turning around and looking at the empty doorway at the end of the hall. "Looks like he finally realizes you lot are here, too. Might as well pull him down here anyways."

As if on cue, the orange-clad form of the Seventh Hokage stumbled through the entryway with the same grace and poise as Tsunade walking home from a bar on a typical Tuesday afternoon. He rubbed his head and grumbled something to himself in indignation, before turning to look at his personal tailed beast with a scowl.

"Could you have at least waited until I finished talking to my son first?" he deadpanned.

The fox simply barred its teeth and narrowed its eyes. "No."

Naruto rolled his eyes. "Fine, whatever," he muttered, moving into the rest of the room and settling down in the middle, near where the massive latch of the gate's seal used to sit within the room.

It was at this point that his vision adjusted, and he caught sight of eight more furious figures residing amid the darkness.

He blinked, and leaned in closer, as if worried this was some sort of dream.

"Shit," he muttered, wide-eyed. "I was honestly hoping I was wrong when I sensed all of you in here. I guess it makes sense then."

"You guess what makes sense, boy?!" bellowed the Four-Tails angrily. "I don't have the time or patience to deal with your lip service! Just tell us what the hell is going on and get us out of here!"

Naruto sweatdropped. "Hey, here happens to be me," he said with a pout. "It's not that bad, right, Kurama?"

He turned to the fox expectantly, who merrily shrugged noncommittally and padded off a bit until he was standing next to his kin.

"Jerk," Naruto sulked, rolling his eyes. Then, he turned his attention to the other tailed beasts. "Regardless, I have no idea what's happening. I was kind of hoping that you had some idea, because I'm honestly stumped." He rubbed the back of his neck in anxiety, a frown deepening on his face. "Usually I have Shikamaru to help me work my way through things like this..." he muttered, narrowing his eyes at the watery floor he was standing on.

Then, his eyes shot open, and he fell to the floor in a pained heap, gasping for breath.

"Hmm. Looks like you're about to reach critical mass," smirked the Nine-Tails, crossing his arms. "Serves you right for cluttering up the place."

"CLUTTER?! Are you calling the rest of us CLUTTER?!" roared Shukaku, leaping in front of Kurama with a deafening crash.

Naruto ignored them as they began to bicker amongst one another once again - mainly because his hearing had been reduced to a dull, ringing ache, as his vision began to spin and blur dangerously.

The only thing he was able to make out before being ripped back out of his own mind into the real world was the crimson red water that was beginning to pool around his body in the sewage sludge, tainted by his own blood, leaking from his mouth.

"Not good..." he muttered, flickering back into consciousness. The cold sweat had gotten significantly worse, and his shaking now looked more like spasms.

Suddenly, the voice of his companion began to echo in his skull. "Look, I don't want you to die as much as you don't want you to die, so I suggest you do something - and fast."

Naruto grimaced - or frowned, one of the two. 'Yeah, and what do you suggest I do?'

The bijuu just snorted from within his mind. "Hell if I should know. What do you humans usually do when you have too much chakra?"

Naruto deadpanned. 'It's not exactly a common issue. But I'm assuming that I have to do something really big - and really chakra taxing - in order to balance everything out. Or...'

He raised an eyebrow in concentration. 'No, I suppose that wouldn't work. I can't just pump it out into nature using some sort of bastardized Sage Mode.'

"...why not?"

'I don't know, Kurama, okay?! Cut me some slack, it's hard to think when you're about to explode from the inside out.'

Then, he frowned. 'Which reminds me. Are your siblings still there?'

"Unfortunately," mumbled Son Gokuu with a hint of indignation.

Naruto sighed, and winced as another bolt of chakra was sent through his system, disrupting his already fragile balance even further. 'Guys - I'm gonna have to ask for a big favor.'

He could feel several of the Bijuu within his gut "hmph" out of spite, but luckily, the ever-levelheaded Eight-Tails broke in before any of the other, more condescending Tailed Beasts could get a word in edgewise.

"As long as you promise to get us out of here quickly, I'm open to anything, Naruto."

Naruto smiled for the first time that evening - albeit small. 'Thanks Gyuuki. I appreciate it.'

"What the hell are you listening to the brat for?" bumbled Shukaku. "For all we know, this could all be his fault!"

"Something makes me seriously doubt that for some reason. Call it intuition." There was a brief pause, before several of the other beasts gave their input after a moment of contemplation.

"I trust Naruto, as well as Gyuuki, Shukaku. I say we give whatever it is he has in mind a chance," purred the Two-Tails.

"Why not?" Choumei buzzed blithely.

Isobu simply grunted in agreement, shortly followed by the others.

Son Gokuu simply sighed from within Naruto's head. "It seems that once again I am trusting you blindly, Naruto. You had better not mess this up."

Naruto sighed quietly to himself in relief. 'Alright. Look, the fact that you're all here and not exactly sealed in me means that all of your chakra is flooding my system, and I can't handle it. I have to... well... jettison most of it. Otherwise, I'm gonna pop - if you can call popping 'detonating with the strength of several hundred tailed beast bombs and leveling three quarters of the continent'.'

"You want us to just give up all of our chakra?!"

'Right now? Yeah. I need to channel it nondestructively out of my system. And if I am going to figure out how to fix whatever the hell is happening, I need time. If you guys end up staying for... longer than expected, then you can slowly start to trickle more of your chakra into my system. I'm sure you all know how that works.'

Another round of grunts was his answer. "Alright, brat, fine. Just don't drain us dry."

Naruto smirked. 'If you all reduce your levels to as low as you can go, and Kurama gets rid of half of his, I should be able to cope with it. It'll still hurt like hell the first few days, but I can handle it.'

"You want me to reduce my power to half of its full potential, just for these fools?" roared the Nine-Tails in fury, causing Naruto to cringe once more - this time in discomfort from having his mind shake and rattle under the beast's might.

Naruto scowled. 'Look, I don't like this as much as you do. But if I'm gonna live through this, and if you don't want to end up taking the next few dozen years reforming somewhere, we've got to cut corners.' Then, he sighed. 'I'm sorry, but this is the only way for the time being. At least you can replenish your chakra later.'

Naruto could practically feel the beast smirking inside his head. "Whatever. I suppose that it's a small price to pay so that the likes of you doesn't pop under our tremendous might."

"Our tremendous might? Why, Kurama, that's the nicest thing you've ever said to us!"

Once again, Naruto could feel the strange conjointed feeling of the Two-Tailed cat Matatabi holding in her laughter, as the face of the great Demon Fox glowered at her.

Refocusing his attention, he opted to try and figure out just where exactly he was, and how to get out.

And quickly. He had barely minutes left, it felt like.

Frantically looking around the cave, he saw his son sitting next to him, seemingly asleep, head leaning against the back of the stone façade in a scene of almost perfect peace.

With what little physical energy had left that was NOT going to quelling his overloaded chakra coils, Naruto leaned over and prodded his son as gently as he could in the shoulder.

The boy shot to attention immediately, lightning blue eyes darting across the darkness, before finally grimacing as they settled on Naruto's own.

"Hey," muttered Naruto hoarsely, still clutching the clothes nearest to where his seal used to be.

"...Hi." Boruto said, narrowing his eyebrows. "Finally up again?"

"Up again?" questioned Naruto quietly, raising an eyebrow.

Boruto just sighed - partially in exhaustion, partially in frustration. "Yeah, you were out for, like, three hours, woke up for three minutes, and then were out again for another twenty."

Naruto blinked. 'Three hours?'

Another train of thought was violently derailed when a flicker of blood-red chakra oozed out of his pores aggressively, lighting the dark cave up like a midsummer's sunset.

Boruto jumped to his feet and immediately backed away, holding a kunai to his chest protectively.

"What the hell are you...?" he glowered, staring down at what appeared to be his father, writhing on the ground.

"Bor'to... don't have much... time left..." he grimaced.

Then - an idea. "Can you... Shunshin...?"

The boy blinked, the grip on his knife loosening ever so slightly. "Uhh... yeah?"

"How... far..."

Boruto just raised a confused eyebrow. "Why are you asking me-"

"JUST ANSWER THE DAMN QUESTION!"

Quaking a bit, eyes like saucers, Boruto managed to blurt out an answer. "I... I can go a few hundred feet, but that's it! I don't have nearly enough chakra!"

Naruto grimaced in affirmation, panting slightly. "Good... can you... do hand... seals... and... move other... people?"

The blond-haired boy just nodded tersely, suddenly fearing for his life.

Then, his father gestured for him to come closer. Boruto's heart began to pound in his throat - the energy that Naruto was emitting was terrifyingly toxic. It caused his entire being to seize up in terror - and yet, he still had the roaring inclination in the back of his head to turn tails and run.

Still, something - something - forced his legs to move to his father's side, who only smiled painfully at the expression that Boruto had on his face.

"Don't be... 'fraid..." he sputtered out, before extending his hand towards the boy. "Can you... take us... to... Valley of... End?"

He doubled over again in pain, letting out a strangled groan.

"What?! The Valley of the End? Isn't that, like, 100 miles away? And a massive crater?!"

Naruto just shook his head, physical exhaustion from holding everything in beginning to take hold. "Don't... worry about distance... I can supply chakra. You just... have to... do the actual jutsu... chakra control shit right now..."

The Hokage shook his outstretched arm in the air expectantly - although Boruto couldn't tell if it a was deliberate act, or another spasmodic shake.

Trepidatiously, Boruto took his father's cold, clammy hand.

And immediately doubled over in pain as he felt his own chakra network be brimmed with a massive amount of energy.

Wincing slightly, he opened his eyes to see that he was shrouded in some sort of red chakra shroud - it flickered around him like bubbling, boiling water, lapping at his clothes and skin like ocean waves. It was warm - almost too warm, but Boruto was too busy reeling from the internal pressure to notice.

"Boruto... Do the jutsu..." Naruto hissed through clenched teeth, still holding his son's arm carefully, watching in worry at the expressions the boy was making from having that much chakra flood his system so suddenly.

With a gasping grunt, the boy nodded, and immediately began to focus on the location he had only heard about in textbooks and stories from his friends. Still, he had a pretty vague idea as to where to go.

Boruto shouted in pain, then in effort shortly after. "SHUNSHIN NO JUTSU!"

And the duo were gone in a flash of wind and leaves.