He's Mad

"Kyubi? What do you wanna talk about?" Naruto was confused. He'd been expecting to dream about Sakura, it was what usually happened when he went to sleep thinking about her. Seeing the nine tails here was an unwelcome surprise, but if a lifetime of being shouted at by authority figures had taught Naruto anything, it was that being aggressive to someone with a lot of power was not a good idea. Unless they were being a dick. Then it was open season.

"Care to explain why you decided to run head first into a temporal dilation?"

"A tempura what now?"

The Kyubi growled at Naruto's words. "Don't play coy with me, boy. The barrier you collided with when you ran at Orochimaru. The one he put up to give him a little extra time to fight the Hokage."

"Ooooh. The blue thingy I hit before I woke up?"

The Kyubi fixed Naruto with a tired stare. _"Yes. The 'blue thingy'." _The air quotes were heavy as he spoke.

"Oh yeah, what about it?" Naruto's hand was scratching the back of his head, a grin on his face.

"Why? Did you? Run at it? You've launched yourself into a temporal loop. Who knows how long it's going to take to run down? Or maybe it'll just run indefinitely, or you'll need to have a perfect month, or be kind to your cameraman. Or maybe just eat a groundhog."

"Why do you keep talking about tempura?" Naruto looked confused. The Kyubi looked exasperated.

"Temporal, not tempura, you utter fool. It means something that relates to time."

Naruto shrugged. "Oh. So what's the deal with the..." he squinted as he tried to remember, "Tempural-"

"Temporal."

"Temporal loop?"

"The depressing part is he isn't even the worst host I've ever had." The Kyubi muttered. "Anyway, from what I've been able to piece together, the basic idea is that you'll relive the next month continuously. Your mind and soul, and therefore techniques and chakra reserves, will be preserved. The rest of the world, including your body, will not. Die, and you wake up in your bed. Fail to complete the first two phases of the exam, and you wake up in your bed. Reach the moment in time you hit the barrier, and you wake up in your bed. Capiche?"

"I'd love a quiche, but I have one question. Why the exam dates?" Contrary to popular belief, Naruto was not an idiot. He was a tactile learner with a food fixation, and had never really been taught to read properly, but he could think through things logically. Sometimes common sense is all you need.

The Kyubi sighed, but decided to focus on the question rather than Naruto's mistakes. "A quirk of the situation, I suppose. This isn't a seal array or any other carefully made chakra structure. It's what happens when you smash the full of my energy into a temporal barrier created by a mad jutsu collector. A thousand cracks through time that happened to create this instead of killing you outright."

"Oh." Naruto didn't speak for a minute. "Uh, why are you telling me this? You've always been really angry at me when we've spoken before." Previous conversations had mostly been maniacal laughter and roaring on the side of the Kyubi.

"This whole loop is tied to you. You could remove the seal, and I could leave your body, but you'd die and the loop would reset. Every time. Like it or not I'm stuck with you for, potentially, centuries. I'd at least like you to become a tolerable companion."

"Whaddya mean?! I'm a great friend!"

"You just asked one of your closest friends on a date at an incredibly moment."

"Huh?"

The Kyubi rolled his eyes. "Sakura, you fool. Look, I may despise humans but you... you have the potential to be a little different. Your heart, if not your execution, is consistently in the right place, which is more than I can say for most humans. Humans don't cry over an enemy's corpse, or greet their greatest enemies with a friendly smile. If you actually learn to read well, expand your vocabulary a little, and become a little less socially dense, well, I may learn not to despise you."

Naruto sat down, crossed his arms, and jutted his chin out. "No."

"No?"

"If we're in this together, then we're friends. Plain and simple."

The Kyubi laughed a deep, pounding laugh that shook the bars of his cage. "You think to call yourself my friend? You've known of me for months, and never even bothered to learn my name!"

"I did! It's Kyubino kitsoonay, isn't it?"

The fox spirit was speechless for a moment. "Kyubi no Kitsune is my title. It means 'nine tailed fox' in Japanese."

"Japa what now?"

"Japanese. Half your jutsu is named using Japanese words. The names of everyone you know are in Japanese!"

"Well I don't know about that, but I can't go around calling you Kyubi, can I? That'd be like calling the old timer Hokage!"

"Yes, heaven forbid you treat an authority figure with respect."

Naruto continued as if the Kyubi's snark hadn't happened. "So come on, fess up. If you don't tell me your name I'll just have to think of a nickname!"

The Kyubi considered Naruto for a time. "Kurama. My name is Kurama. It was given to me by the person I respect most in the world, boy. I will not accept one of your inane shortenings."

Naruto nodded solemnly. "Important like the old timer?"

Kurama paused for a second before answering. "Yes, I suppose so."

"Kurama it is then!" Naruto grinned and got up to leave. Just as he was about to wake himself though, he had a thought. "Kurama, we're the only ones in this loop, right?"

"I'd know if someone else was in the loop, Naruto. It's a direct product of my power, after all."

"Nah, that's not what I was meant. Is there a way to bring others in? Sasuke would love the time to train. I don't want to see Hinata go through that fight with Neji again. And if I brought Sasuke in, it wouldn't feel right without having Sakura to round out the team."

Kurama regarded him. "You want your friends."

"The rest of my friends, Kurama."

"I'll see if I can think of something."

"Thanks best buddy."

"Don't push it, Naruto. My name's Kurama. And in the meantime, try seeing what you can do to pass the time."