Mother Wants Blood
Disclaimer: I don't own things, but I did write this.
A Naruto fanfiction featuring my OC, who is awesome and she has the Byakugan and a combination of the Rinnegan and Sharingan and Kimimaro's bone powers only better, and she's super powerful and can teleport like Tobi and is part plant like Zetsu, and she's actually the mother of the Sage of Six Paths and also secretly the Ten-Tailed Beast and she's the princess of the moon.
UPDATE: I have been informed that the aforementioned character is not, in fact, an OC, but is a canon character. This changes nothing.
The demon Shukaku towered over Suna, shrieking with madness and glee. The villagers had experience with the beast's thirst for blood, apparent even with the Shukaku bound within the body of the child Gaara, the demon-that-loves-only-itself. But this, the frenzy of an unrestrained Bijuu, was something else entirely. All fled before the monster; some with the presence of mind to report to the Kazekage, some only seeking to put distance between themselves and the ten-story silhouette.
All fled save one woman, rather.
"SHUKAKU! What exactly do you think you are doing, young lady?"
"What?" The demon Shukaku was caught completely off-guard. What the hell? This lady was 1. not running away from the ten-story sand demon, 2. berating Shukaku for misbehaving, and 3. calling Shukaku young lady. Shukaku didn't even.
"I'm in the area, I take the opportunity to see my dear daughter for the first time in literally forever, and this is what I find you doing!? I know I haven't been there for you and your siblings- not by choice, mind you- but this is just..." The woman yanked at her bone-white hair in disappointed frustration.
"Lady, I dunno who you are-"
"I know! You don't even know your own mother! Oh, I am the worst parent in history," the woman wept bitterly. (Incidentally, this was true. If the Elemental Nations had ever seen a greater example of terrible parenting, it was now lost to prehistory.)
"Lady, whoever you are, you're not my mom. I'm a freakin' ten-story sand monster! My 'mother', if I gotta pick something to count, was this horrible freakish ten-tailed ragebeast!"
The woman winced. "Not... entirely untrue, dear, but hurtful. I was not in a good headspace back then. And it certainly hurts to see my daughter making the same mistakes herself!"
The Shukaku boggled. Okay, this crazy lady had convinced herself she was its mother. Which, apparently, meant convincing herself she was the Juubi, nevermind that it made no sense, sensicality seemed foreign to this chick anyway. Well, whatever. When in doubt, crush kill destroy.
The Ichibi slammed its tail down on the insane woman, eager to quench its thirst with her blood.
The woman held up a hand and caught the tail as it descended.
"And now you're attacking your own family? Goodness, Shukaku, you really are intent on making all the bad choices I did, back then," she said with deep disappointment.
What. The hell. Not Shukaku's first time thinking it, but seriously, it bore repeating.
"Right, so," the woman continued as if nothing of consequence had happened, "what's this business about 'mother wants your blood' I heard about on my way in? What exactly are you doing to that poor adorable child you've adopted?"
Shukaku blinked. "Adopted?"
"The poor dear looks to you as his mother, doesn't he?"
"Wait. Is that why you keep calling me a girl?"
The woman rolled her eyes. "Of course not, dear, though it is rather telling. A mother simply knows these things."
"Lady, if my mother'd been human like you, I wouldn't be a giant mass of chakra-animated sand. I'd have my own damn blood, and wouldn't need to keep crushing it out of other dudes."
It was the woman's turn to blink. "Wait. Is that what that whole mess has been about? Well then, that's a comparatively easy fix. Come along, dear, best we take this outside the walls."
"Wait. Again, what? How're you planning to fix that kinda shit?"
The woman raised an eyebrow. "Dear, I am your mother. Giving my daughter a flesh and blood body is literally in the job description. Now come, come, we'll be heading out of the village for this. Do try not to cause irreparable damage to anyone or anything as you make your way out."
The Suna gate guards were standing uneasily in the midnight desert chill, wondering when someone would be sent to try and retrieve the village's jinchuuriki, hoping none of them would be tasked and hoping not to be at the gates when it returned. They certainly noticed the instant a pair of women came into view over a dune in the distance, one... wearing rabbit ears, for some reason? And the other carrying a small child.
Wait, was that the jinchuuriki?
Was he sleeping!?
This seemed like a good time to send a runner to the Kazekage.
Rasa was already there when the two women (and one demon-host) reached the gates. He took in their appearance as he approached, ANBU flanking him. The woman holding Gaara (the demon's vessel, he told himself, not his son, not here and now) was dusky-skinned and red-haired, features that hinted of Kumo (and wouldn't Kumo love to get their hands on Suna's jinchuuriki. But why bring him back, then?), but with dark markings visible wherever her skin was exposed (and her clothing was too revealing and casual to be comfortable to any but a trained ninja in the harsh environment of central Wind Country, and she seemed entirely at ease.) Her eyes... her eyes were a shock, and not a particularly pleasant one. Yellow, with cross-shaped pupils. Like the demon's. And she was holding his son.
(Not his son, the demon's prison, please still the demon's prison, surely Gaara wouldn't have survived an extraction and there he was sleeping peacefully- but how was he sleeping peacefully when he hadn't slept for a single night in six years of life?)
The other woman looked far more ordinary. Albino coloring, uncommon but not unique, white hair and red eyes. She was, as the report had mentioned, wearing costume bunny ears of all things, and no, it wasn't some bizarre bloodline, the plastic band holding them on her head wasn't even hidden (though they were bent back at that odd angle, and seemed oddly stiff, and wasn't that band a bit too obvious?). Her forehead was covered by a strip of cloth, rather than a hitai-ate (what was it concealing? And why did she not have eyebrows?). She was wearing a pink sweater of all things, like some old grandmother (and it was just so blatantly obvious how it was all calculated to look harmless, surely she didn't expect anyone to be fooled?).
Yet she seemed entirely at ease facing down a Kage and his guard.
"Surrender the jinchuuriki," Rasa commanded, his voice and face too trained to reveal any of his inner concern.
"Gaara," the red-eyed woman corrected, raising an... eyebrow? (shaved eyebrows and those blue dots- a clan marking?) at him in remonstration. "Treat him as a child rather than a monster and perhaps he'll behave accordingly."
"Oi. Gaara," her companion said, nudging the child she was holding awake. "Your father's here so wake up, kid."
Gaara opened sleepy eyes blearily. "Mother?" he asked confusedly. "You sound like Mother."
Given that the child was mad, and the voice he called his mother was in truth the Shukaku's, and this woman whom he said sounded like his mother had the demon's eyes, well. It painted a rather disconcerting, if muddled and confusing, picture.
"I'm not the woman that gave birth to ya, but I guess I could be your mom? Yeah, you're right," the casually-dressed girl added to the woman in a sweater beside her, "he's actually ridiculously adorbs. Damn," she sighed, "now I'm gonna feel all bad 'n shit about all the," she gestured vaguely with her free hand, "stuff I guess I put him through up 'till now."
He'd had enough. Rasa still didn't know what was going on (though he had suspicions, did he ever have suspicions, but surely they were absurd), and he was fed up with it. "You two. Identify yourselves."
"Dear me, I've been quite rude, haven't I?" The bunny-eared woman inclined her head at him (and those damn ears didn't move an inch.) "You can call me Usagi, and this is my daughter Shukaku."
Shukaku raised an eyebrow at her mother- "Usagi? Really?"- but Rasa was too busy trying to process this information. The crude girl he'd been increasingly suspecting of being associated with, influenced by or even possessed by the demon had just admitted to being Shukaku. And the woman in the pink sweater and costume-store bunny ears was her mother.
What.
"That!" Shukaku pointed at him, as she lowered Gaara to stand on his own. "That was exactly the expression I had, eh, mom?"
"Except that he's not a ten-story-tall sand monster," 'Usagi' pointed out, voice amused and with her mouth quirking into a half-smile.
"Except that, yeah."
Rasa wanted badly to pinch the bridge of his nose to relieve some of the headache he was devloping, but this was a time to have both hands free. "Are you telling me that you," and he gestured to the irreverent girl, "are the demon Shukaku, and that you," he waved at the rabbit-eared albino, "are her mother?"
"Demon is such a harsh word," the immortal centuries-old chakra beast's mother said soothingly.
"But yeah," acknowledged the immortal centuries-old chakra beast.
Rasa gave in and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Not that I don't appreciate it," he said slowly, "but why are you not madly trying to kill us, demanding our blood?"
Shukaku seemed to have been waiting for this question, if the eagerness of her answer was anything to judge by. "Because I got my own now, bitches!" she cackled, holding up an arm and feeling her pulse as if demonstrating.
"My daughter was suffering from a... neurological issue-"
"Neurological issue? Really?"
"Yes, dear, a lack of neurology counts as an issue- that I have corrected."
"You corrected Shukaku's neurological issue. That issue being, I gather, that ten-story sand demons don't actually have brains."
"Oi! Not entirely untrue, but hurtful!"
"Yes, as her mother it was of course my responsibility to make her a functioning, healthy body."
"And..." Rasa paused, struggling to come up with his next question. "How did you escape the seal?"
Shukaku, to whom he'd addressed the question, shrugged and looked to her mother.
"She didn't, precisely. I was unable to find a way to accomplish that without causing political complications for your village and posing an unacceptable health risk to Gaara, besides. Technically, she is still confined to the seal- it is just that the seal now binds her to her own body as well as Gaara's," the demon-mother explained.
"I was not aware that such a thing was possible," Rasa mused. If one could create multiple jinchuuriki from a single Tailed Beast... why had it not been done before? The potential of such a thing was staggering.
"Perhaps not with the seal remaining able to confine the unwilling," Usagi agreed. Well. That explained why it had not been done before.
Rasa considered. "Should I presume such a seal explains your own form, ah... Usagi?"
"Oh, no," she laughed. "No, this is the body I was born with. I've had it for far longer than I've been a Bijuu," she pleasantly informed him.
What.
"Hey, it's that expression again!"
Rasa was just... so ready to be done with this. They didn't seem hostile, at least. "So what exactly is it you want with Gaara? I note you show no intentions of leaving," he observed resignedly.
"It is clear poor Gaara lacks a proper maternal figure in his life, and since my daughter had already been casting herself in that role despite certain... deficiencies," Usagi conceded tactfully, "I feel it would be best for her to continue, particularly now that she is mentally stable. As he will be her first, I will of course remain to assist her as long as need be."
A Tailed Beast wanted to adopt his child. Worse, it genuinely seemed like a reasonable course of action. At least now the jinchuuriki wouldn't slaughter the people of Suna at the command of maddened whispers in his head. (At least now he wouldn't have to make plan after plan to assassinate his own son.)
"...Very well," Rasa finally agreed, reluctant but just so tired of this mess, so willing to take an option that made the problem go away when it was offered. "You shall have to arrange for your own lodgings, but so long as you cause no trouble for Suna, it is no concern of mine if you associate with the jinchuuriki."
Rasa turned away, hearing the Usagi woman chide him once more for not calling Gaara by name. As he made his way back to his office, he asked himself if this was really the sort of day to approach sober.
"Mom?"
"Yes, dear?"
"Anything we can do about my eyes? They're kinda noticeable, and all."
The red-eyed Usagi smirked knowingly. "Contact lenses."