This is my first fanfic, Tale of the Legendary Thunderstorm. For my first fanfic, I wanted to go with something unique. I've read the manga up to the most recent issue and Kurama is one of my most favorite characters and I like how Kishimoto has expanded on his relationships with Kushina and Naruto. That being said, I felt like Naruto being the Jinchuriki of the Nine-Tailed Fox had been done to death, even if it's canon. I felt changeing Kurama from a fox to another animal would make a great story but I went further. I initailly considered a dragon as the new Kyubi but they're overdone too. I contiued along the lines of mythical beasts and I came across the Thunder Bird of Native American culture. Raiton jutsu are my personal favorite and I used to be an avid bird watcher. I was sold. So here's an AU where Naruto is the holder of the Nine-Tailed Thunder Bird and a Kumo ninja. Enjoy and don't forget to review. -WastelandPhantom
Dark Clouds on the Horizon
A sighed as another session of loud, rolling thunder shook his office. The lights above flickered before going dark and the strong vibrations caused a large pile of paperwork to fall from his desk. He gave another sigh and flared his chakra, signaling for his assistant. Known as the Yondaime Raikage, A was a tall dark-skinned man with a large muscular build over which he wore his distinctive robes of office. He wore his white hair combed back, and he had a small moustache and beard. The hulking Raikage turned his chair around and walked over to the large plate glass windows behind his desk, arms crossed and brow furrowed. What he saw didn't do anything to lighten his mood. Fat heavy rain drops fell from the blackened sky, impacting his window like bombs. Massive clouds roiled in the sky above his beloved village and bright blue lightning flowed through them like serpents, occasionally slamming down into the mountains and accompanied by powerful booming thunder. The main body of the storm was still a day or so away, give or take a few hours, but the man worried about what those bolts could do to the village especially with the power the storm was showing from so far away. He narrowed his eyes while he thought out what he should do. His thoughts were interrupted by his assistant knocking on his door.
"Come in." he grunted, still not taking his eyes off the storm.
The door opened and A's assistant, Mabui walked in, a lantern in one hand and a folder in the other. Mabui was a dark-skinned woman with green eyes and light grey hair pulled back into a bun with two bangs that fell on either side of her face. Despite being a kunoichi, she preferred to wear more formal attire consisting of a long-sleeved, high-collared dress shirt and skirt.
"Power is out throughout the entire tower sir. Several other districts and important buildings around the village are also without it including the hospital although they have temporary generators up and running. The air's thicker with static electricity than it's ever been. There have been over thirty reports of heart attacks in elder citizens in just the past hour alone. Things are going to get even harder as the storm draws near."
"Great, more bad news. Could things get any worse?"
"Unfortunately they have sir." Mabui walked over to the her leader and frowned when the glow from her lantern illuminated the harsh worry lines on A's face. A was never worried. He usually rushed into problems head on, with more of a combination of anger and excitement than anything. "Here are the reports from the advance scouts you sent up to Gale Peak." She handed over the folder she had brought to A who began to read the reports inside. His eyes widened as he read, astonishment joining worry in his expression.
"This can't be. Then that means the nest is…"
"Empty sir. Something has happened to upset the Kyubi. The storm is his power, his doing. He's headed for the village sir. What do you want us to do?" A grim look overcame A's face and he gave his orders with the resolve a Kage required.
"Send out a full scale evacuation order. I want all available chunin and jounin to escort the civilians into the sanctuaries. ANBU are to secure all high risk areas and await further orders. I don't think any villages are involved with this but just in case, I don't want to give any spys an oppurtunity in a moment of crisis."
"What about the bird sir?"
A held his head as he thought. The biju would bring absolute destruction to Kumo if he got even a few hours closer. Hurricane winds and terrible thunderstorms were the calling card of the Nine-Tailed Thunder Bird. The village would be blown off the map. As he ran through his options, he could come to only one conclusion.
"We have to seal it Mabui." His assistant's eyes widened.
"How can we sir? The Kyubi is on a whole other level compared to the other biju. We don't have seals capable of holding it."
"Let me worry about the seal. The seal's useless without a child anyway. Do we have one capable of handling a sealing? It will have to be a newborn to handle Kyubi's infinite youkai."
"I'll head to the hospital to find a potential candidate sir." A nodded and let her go. As she left he thought about the seal.
'It'll need to be Uzumaki in origin. They were the only clan with fuinjutsu skills high enough to attempt this. Problem is where am I going to find an Uzumaki?' A racked his brain for an answer. While he contemplated the Uzumaki, he grabbed one of his weights and began to lift, not necessarily aiming to work out but to stave off stress. 'We have a few samples of Uzumaki seals but nothing with which we can recreate a containment seal for the Kyubi. We'd need an actual Uzumaki or a seal master of equal caliber.' And then it came to him.
~/~/~/~/~/~/~/~/~/~/~/~
At the same time that A was coming up with a solution to sealing the Kyubi, Mabui was jumping across the circular rooftops of the village to the hospital, though with some difficulty. The powerful gale force wind was pushing against her, forcing her to the ground until it would let up for a few seconds. The rain hit her with the combined speed of the wind and her own sprinting. It was strong enough to leave little bruises all over her body. Despite the difficulty of travelling in these conditions, she was able to make it to the hospital. Kumo General was a cone shaped building built around the peak of one Kumo's many mountains. Instead of going through the front door and having to climb several flights of stairs, Mabui jumped onto the side of the slippery building and jumped up to the seventh floor, the maternity ward. She came in through a window in the lobby and walked up to the front desk.
"On Raikage-sama's orders, I need all of today's birth records and information on all expected births within the next 24 hours." she ordered, addressing the attendant behind the desk. The man snapped to attention and with a quick "Yes ma'am", she was shortly after handed a long printout of names and personal information to bring back to A.
Just as Mabui was about to jump back out the window she felt another pulse of chakra from A. 'Maybe he found a seal. I'm on my way sir.' The window was a no go as the pressure of the wind outside was causing the glass to push against it's frame. She addressed the attendant again. "Get these windows covered up now! The glass is going to create dangerous shrapnel inside if you don't! Relay those orders to every floor!"
"Yes ma'am!"
While the attendant began relaying the order through the intercom system, Mabui ran over to the stairwell and jumped down to the first floor. She shook off the impact and ran out to the main lobby and made her way to the front door. Unfortunately for Mabui, in the time it took to gather the records, the Kyubi had gotten even closer to Kumo. The rain came down in solid sheets now and the howling wind picked up trash and debris and tossed it around the village. She barely had time to duck back into the hospital to avoid a fruit stand that smashed into the ground where she had been standing. 'It's too dangerous to go back outside. Dammit.' She turned back to the lobby and found the chief medic nin pulling a piece of wood from the chest of a chunin who had been out in the storm evacuating civilians. She waited until the green glow faded from his hands and the chunin was taken away to rest. The man looked around and saw the Raikage's personal aid needing his attention.
"What can I do for you Mabui-san?"
"I need to know where the emergency access tunnels for the hospital are. I need to get back to Raikage-sama but the storm blocks my path." The man nodded in understanding
"I'll have an orderly take you right now." As he walked off to procure an orderly that wasn't busy, Mabui took the moment to sit and rest. Another burst of chakra from A registered on her senses.
'I'm coming sir.'
Meanwhile in the Raikage tower, A was pacing back and forth, waiting for his aid to return and occasionally looking at his desk. A letter sat on it next to a unique tri-pronged kunai.
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Many miles away from the storm covered hidden village, across Frost Country and The Land of Hot Springs sat Fire Country, home to Konohagakure. Polar opposite to Kumo's current conditions, it was a warm evening in Konoha. Children ran through the lamplit streets chasing fireflies and playing games while adults talked to friends over tea, sake, and dumplings. Even some of the ninja took time out of a busy day to get together and drink, swapping stories and unwinding after another busy day. Konoha was, in a word, peaceful. Standing watch over the village was the Hokage's Tower. It is here that the Yondaime Hokage sat at his desk, paperwork done for the day, sipping on a cup of tea and waiting for his wife to arrive. Namikaze Minato was a fairly tall, fair-skinned man with bright blue-eyes and spiky blond hair that had jaw-length bangs framing either side of his face. He wore his normal attire consisting of a standard Konoha-nin uniform with two bands each on both of his sleeves. Over that he wore a short-sleeved long white coat decorated by flames-like motifs on the edges, with the kanji for Fourth Hokage written vertically down the back, and closed on the front by a thin orange rope. His cup was halfway to his mouth when the door opened and in walked his wife. Former Uzumaki now Namikaze Kushina was 3 months pregnant with his child. The image of his pregnant wife holding her barely there baby bump, her face framed by the crimson hair that got his attention when they were younger, brought feelings of deep love from him. At that moment he realized Kushina had been saying something.
"I'm sorry Kushina-chan what was that?"
"If you would open up your ears you would know that I said I got the results from Tsunade," she said with frustration. Minato's expression lit up.
"Really!? Come sit down and tell me," he exclaimed, getting up and guiding his wife to the couch in his office. Kushina seemed to take her time getting comfortable, obviously having fun at her husband's expense. "Well? What did Tsunade find? C'mon Kushina-chan tell me."
"Well first off, the baby is developing well, no problems."
"That's great. Is it a boy or a girl?"
"Oh don't worry," she said with a grin. "Your drop-dead gorgeous wife is fine too. Thanks for asking"
"Aw Kushi-chan, you know I want you to be okay too."
"I know Minato-kun. It's a girl. You're gonna have a beautiful baby girl. Well actually I'm gonna have a beautiful baby girl but you know what I... mmph? Mmmmmmm." Kushina would have continued if she hadn't be cut off by her husband's lips meeting hers. She closed her eyes in enjoyment and wrapped the man in a hug while her toungue wrestled with his for dominance which he eagerly returned. They kissed for a few more moments before regretfully, Minato pulled himself away.
"A girl? This is wonderful! I bet she'll be just as beautiful as her mother," he said with a cheeky grin directed at his wife. Kushina slapped his shoulder and pretended to be embarrassed.
"Oh you. Flattery will get you nowhere ." Minato raised an eyebrow.
"Is that a challenge ?"
"It can be if you want," she bantered.
"We'll get to that later, I can promise you that Kushina-chan. But now it's time for celebration!" Minato turned from his wife and yelled out the window. "Kakashi!" Within seconds, a young man appeared in the middle of the room in a crouch facing the Hokage. Hatake Kakashi, one of Minato's former students, was a fair-skinned relatively tall shinobi. He had spiky white hair, and dark eyes with a scar over the left one though it's not normally visable as he wears his forehead protector tilted to the left to cover it, and a mask which obscures the lower-half of his face.
"Hello Kushina-sama, Minato-sensei. What can I do for you?" The man was suddenly engulfed in a hug by his sensei.
"I'm gonna have a daughter Kakashi! Round up our friends and tell them I'm throwing a party at the Namikaze estate!" Kakashi patted his excited sensei on the back while trying to force the man to let him go.
"Congratulations sensei, congratulations Kushina-sama. If you'd kindly let me go sensei, I'll extend the invitations." Minato did as Kakashi asked and rubbed the back of his head.
"Sorry about that Kakashi, I'll see you tonight okay?" Kakashi paused as he prepared to jump out the window.
"Of course sensei," he said, before leaping out of the window.
Minato walked over to the window Kakashi had just vacated and looked towards the stars that were just starting to shine. Kushina walked over to him and wrapped her arms around him again and set her chin on his arm. Minato turned and returned the hug.
"Are we ready for this Kushina-chan? The responsibility of raising our daughter? As happy as I am, I can't help but feel nervous. I was an orphan growing up. A family to hold has always been my biggest dream. Now that I have you and a baby on the way, I'm happy but..." He stopped when he felt his wife cup his face and forced him to look her in the eyes.
"Yes we are ready. Don't doubt yourself honey. You'll make a great father. I have faith in you." They seperated from the hug but continued to hold hands, staring into each other's eyes.
"I love you Kushi-chan"
"I love you too Mini-kun"
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Mabui pushed herself to run faster, using her chakra to boost her speed. The emergency tunnels under the village linked several key structures including the Academy, ANBU HQ, Kumo General, and they Raikage Tower. The tunnels formed a natural maze to hinder enemy shinobi in case of an invasion and while she knew what turns to take, the tunnels were a pain to traverse. Kumo had been uncontested in terms of miiitary strength for years. While both Konoha and Iwa could fight them toe-to-toe, it would not be without casualties. Some areas of the tunnels had decayed due to lack of maintenence and a sense of complacency. As soon as this crisis was over, she was going to talk to A about renovating them. 'If we even make it through this in one piece...' she thought morbidly. There was no time for doubt now. One last turn and she came to the staircase that would bring her into the Raikage tower. She emerged from behind a false wall in her own personal office. She closed the secret passage and made her way to A's office. Upon entering, A gave a sigh of relief.
"What took you so long Mabui?"
"The storm delayed me. I had to take the emergency tunnels. Here are the birth records for today and the projected births for the next 24 hours." A took the paperwork with gratitude.
"Good job Mabui. I'll look through these and pick a candidate. There's something else I need you to do now. How are your chakra levels?"
"I'm good sir. Do you need me to use the Heavenly Transfer Jutsu?" A grinned.
"Yes I do. I know how we're going to seal the Kyubi but we're going to need outside help."
"Outside sir? Kyubi's tempest has cut off Kumo from the rest of Kaminari no Kuni."
"Which is why you're going to send this letter," A paused to retrieve the letter from his dezk and hand it to Mabui, "to Konoha, specifically the Hokage tower. I'm asking the Yondaime Hokage to come to our aid as our ally. Minato is married to an Uzumaki and is a qualified fuinjutsu master. If anyone can come up with a seal for the Kyubi in such a small span of time, it's him." A gave her a serious look. "This might be the most important thing you've ever done for our village. Take as much time as you need to prepare but try to hurry. The storms outer wall will impact the village in about 10 hours. 2 hours after that happens, the inner wall will breach the village and the Kyubi itself will grace us with it's presence. The village will be destroyed. Our very future depends on you Mabui and the Hokage." A grunted in anger and looked at the floor. "It shames me that I can't protect my own village by myself but only a fool would not look for help in such a bleak situation." As if punctuating on A's statement, a terrible screech came from the direction of the oncoming storm. It was a powerful wailing call promising untold destruction on any being in it's owner's path and the storm seemed to heed the call. The winds grew stronger and lightning lanced out of the clouds at faster intervals. Mabui felt a sense of dread like a cold hand gripping her heart. With a look of determination, she shook it off and regained her normal calmness.
"I'll begin immediately sir. I just hope the Hokage answers your call." She shunshined to the special chamber she used for her signature technique, leaving A to comb through the list of children. 'I hope so too Mabui.'