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Prologue
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V
There is a moment when you realize how sideways a situation is going to become. Even your heart pumping the god-like feelings of adrenaline, is unable to stave off the foreboding that clings to your gut. In that moment…
Is when things really begin to change.
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Kakashi knew they should have turned back when Tazuna, the bridge builder, lied. He knew they should have turned back when the Demon of the Bloody Mist, Momochi Zabuza made his getaway, aided by that fake hunter-nin. His cute little Genin weren't ready for this, barely out of the Academy, wet behind the ears and so-so-so green that it made his flak jacket dull by comparison.
No, they weren't ready for this, no one was ever ready for this.
He wasn't ready either… if he was honest...
Blood dripped in rivers down the chin of the boy on his arm, a small determined look set on a rapidly paling face. The sound of a thousand chirping birds dwindling down into the near silence of a steady splatter of life giving liquid on cement.
Sakura let out a blood curtailing scream as the mist cleared, Kakashi, even with his enhanced hearing, barely registers the distant, horror filled shriek. He can only stare at the boy clinging to his arm in an effort to stave off certain death for just a few moments longer. Morbidly, Kakashi muses, he would last longer if he stopped trying to move, it was a wasted effort anyway…
His whole career was a wasted effort.
Dry lips parted, likely in a vain attempt at last words, but a stream of blood gurgled past them instead. It allowed the child a rattling breath, likely a small reprieve to the heavy drowning feeling in his lungs.
Why had the boy done it? To protect the monster hidden in the mist?
No… not likely.
Shocked, warm-brown eyes just to the side of damp blond-locks was likely the reason. Naruto, sworn to protect his friends, even if they were the enemy…
Kakashi pulled his hand back with a squelch, orange, synthetic fibers clinging to the rapidly drying blood. Instead of letting his listless student crumple to the ground, he pulled the too small body against his own as his knees gave out. As if holding onto the body would keep the tiny soul inside of it.
There was so much blood, too much blood, it wouldn't stop.
Why would it?
It was an assassination jutsu after all, it did its job, but why, oh why, couldn't he do his own job right? He had one job, protect his teammates.
Kami-sama… what had he done?
CHAPTER I
(The Rubber Band)
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V
Self preservation is rooted into our being, so much so, that often it is impossible to overcome the urge to save oneself. It is the primal side, survival and fear of the unknown, what lies beyond that drives us. Only when our lives are truly on the line will we discover this truth about ourselves…
The lengths we would go to survive.
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More than once Naruto had been accused of being impulsive and lacking forethought for his actions.
They would be wrong, nine times out of ten.
More often than not, there was a great deal of planning that went into his pranks, training, meals and the general direction his life went in. People often mistook the brashness and obscure patterns Naruto used as idiotic carelessness.
The true lack of thinking things through was repeating the same thing time and time again. There was order, for sure, a system followed that resulted in the same outcome without outside interference every time. A routine… predictable and easily foiled time, after time, after time, so ingrained it no longer required forethought. It was no wonder he got away with his little schemes so often, if you really want a plan to work, you gotta change it up, think on your feet.
Besides, plans hardly lasted past first contact with the enemy, they were made to be changed, to be fluid, bending… unpredictable.
Did he always plan?
No.
One time out of ten, the exception to every rule and Naruto's hand latched onto it like a rubber band stretched to it's limit, ready to be snapped back into its place.
And snap he did; right into his Sensei's lightning fist… no pun intended…
Kakashi was panting, clearly out of breath and Naruto found himself having trouble mirroring the same motion despite being winded. Not that either of them really expected that he could, the hand through his chest was clearly a good indicator as to why breathing wasn't an option.
Naruto didn't want to die, hadn't planned on this happening and neither had Kakashi, nor Haku, who had intended to take the blow himself. It all happened so fast, one minute he was about to kill a boy who had been begging him for death and the next, death was staring him down with mismatched irises. Mismatched irises that belonged to his Sensei's panic filled eyes.
The fabric Naruto was pulled against was rough and uncomfortable. Everything overly sensitive and yet numbing all at once. Kakashi's shaking hand twisted through his hair and Naruto didn't have the heart or the breath to tell him it felt weird. His senses were overwhelmed, he couldn't tell what hurt and what didn't. Logically the big gaping wound in his chest should hurt the most, but dully, he noted, it was the knuckles on his right hand, the ones that shattered Haku's mask.
It is said that your life flashes before your eyes before death… Naruto didn't experience any of that, no panic, no fear, no life before his eyes, just the steady thrum of power still coursing through his body. There was one thought coursing through Naruto's mind in that moment.
'I don't want to die.'
Then, like a switch being flipped, he remembered. The wound slowly closed in his chest and a new power washed over him, followed by a flood of knowledge that hadn't been there before. Later, when his mind was clear of the fogginess of blood loss, he might liken the whole thing to having amnesia. One moment he thought of himself as Naruto a name given to him by human parents and the next he remember being someone else… something else.
Snap, it just clicked into place, as if he had been trying to remember something important his whole life, only to stop thinking about it and it come to him at the most random of times. Triggered by a thought, a burning need that crossed time and space, something so familiar, yet still new. He had not wanted to die then either.
But die he had, held in the arms of his daughter, surrounded by his other children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and their significant others. As badly as he had wanted to see his long dead friends, that selfish, primal part of him craved to keep living. He wasn't a coward, not really, he knew what laid beyond death, knew not to fear it, but try as he might, he couldn't let go of the living world. Things had changed over the centuries, his family grew, humans evolved and war came to the beings that emerged…
Threatened to return even after they had been stopped.
Perhaps that was why he had asked it of Koenma, begged him this favor and it came with a price…
It always comes with a price.
He wouldn't remember each time he was reborn, wasn't supposed to remember, but things didn't always play out the way the little god planned. Death was supposed to be the only time he was himself once more… but, never before had his body been strong enough to overcome death. This body should have been dead several minutes ago and yet, despite not being able to breath for the moment, he was still among the mortal plane. Alive and able to remember who he is… was.
He was Yoko Kurama and he had died, only to be reborn time and time again… oh the irony. There was no doubt that Koenma had done it on purpose, sending him into life cycles of his own descendants, this time into the body of Uzumaki Naruto. However, Kurama doubted that even King Enma could have foreseen the Kyūbi no Kitsune being sealed inside of this mortal vessel. Of all the odds, a fox sealed with a fox was not something Kurama could have imagined. It did, however, serve him well. Without the angry, corrosive chakra coursing through the pathways of this young body, Kurama wouldn't have remembered… would have died again.
Kakashi slowly pushed Naruto away in shock as hair lightened and lengthened. Claws that had receded after fighting Haku returned, a tail that had been nothing but chakra moments ago, now solid and covered in his own silky fur. Fleshy ears were replaced by fur covered ones, shifting to better fit his head and eyes once as blue as the sky, were now a metallic gold.
"N-Naruto?" Kakashi croaked, voice raw with mixed emotions as the anguish of killing his student was replaced with confusion and apprehension.
"Sensei… I-"
"-Well, well, well, what do we have here?" A grating voice interrupted and all heads turn to find a short man stepping out of the mist. The cane he carried clacked noisily against the cement and his small, round glasses gave his eyes an even beadier look. "You're all talk, I hired you to do a job and you can't even take out one of them? Tch, Demon of the Mist, what a waste. It's a good thing I never planned on paying you, clearly you weren't worth it anyway."
Kurama didn't like him one bit, he had seen his ilk before… killed men just like him.
"You are a fool." Kurama chuckled, ears flattened against his head and the minute flick of his tail betraying the false humor at Gatō's deception. Gatō openly laughed at that, as if he had the upper hand in the situation.
"You really think you can beat me? You look as if you can barely stand and I have you out numbered!" Gatō cackled, the men around him raising their weapons threateningly.
"Strange, I thought clowns were supposed to make everyone else laugh." Kurama deadpanned and Kakashi put a warning hand on his shoulder.
"There's no need to taunt him, Naruto." His Sensei warned and Kurama's tail only gave a twitch in response.
"What was that? I'll make you regret crossing paths with me!" He bellowed and Kurama raised a pinky finger, digging it into his ringing ear.
"Regret has a whole other meaning to someone who has lived as long as I, but I don't think you will be one of them." Huffing, Kurama brushed off Kakashi's shaking hand and looked to Haku. "Do you have an seeds or herbs on you at the moment?" He asked and the boy nodded, pulling out a handful of dried leaves, pods and seeds.
"W-what do you want them for?" Haku asked, looking to Zabuza to confirm it was alright to give their one-time enemy the plants.
Kurama selected the rosehip from the pile with a sly grin and crushed it in his palm. He produce a single rose, running his hands through his hair to distribute the other seeds for later use and raised the flower to his nose. "Stopping to smell the roses of course." He chuckled at the widening of the shinobi's eyes and turned his attention back to a scoffing Gatō.
"Cheap tricks won't save you, not once my men are through with you." The business tycoon boasted and his men chuckled, taking a threatening step forward.
The others shared worried looks, unbeknownst to Kurama, the general consensus was that he shouldn't have been able to do that.
Not from a seed.
Feeding the rose his chakra, Kurama snapped his arm out, growing his trade-mark whip and allowed the thorny vine to pool at his feet. It gave Gatō and his bandits pause at the rose petals floating in the rapidly fading mist.
"Rose whip, petals and thorns." The slowly descending petals paused mid air and hardened, turning their sharp edges toward Gatō's men.
The first man to scoff was the first to be attacked, shock etched on his face as he collapsed from his wounds. Gatō fell back, his butt hitting cement hard and attempting to scramble away from the rapidly decreasing number of his men. Paying the man no heed as the coward gave a fearful scream and demand for his men to stop him, Kurama incapacitated the remainder of the bandits with a bored sigh.
Stalking forward a few paces, Kurama paused before the rat of a man. His hip was jutted out confidently, tail swaying calmly as he stared contemptuously to the scum at his feet. Sneering, his lip curled back from his canines and a low growl emanated from his chest as Gatō drew a short sword from the cane.
"S-stay away from me!" He shouted, swinging the weapon blindly as if it were a club.
"Tell me, do you regret killing innocent people?" Kurama demanded and Gatō snarled that he didn't. One second Kurama's arm was loose at his side and the next there were several snaps, his arm was raised and the whip was settled back down, its movements nigh untraceable by anything but the sharingan. "Then I will have no regret removing the scum that you are from my sight."
"I'll kill yo-ack!' Gatō had been about to threaten, only for his vision to bisect, along with his limbs and the rest of his flesh as the slashes Kurama had made finally registered.
Just like that, the business tycoon that terrorizes the land of waves was nothing more than a stain on the bridge to be forgotten and trampled over.
"N-Naruto?"
Kurama's ears twitched at the name and he turned a gentle smile to his pink haired teammate. Opening his mouth to reassure her, of what he didn't know, the world tilted sideways and the corners of his vision blackened. His knees gave out and he was dimly aware of the cement rushing up to greet him.
Clearly he had over exerted himself and childishly thought it wasn't fair that his cool image was now ruined…
No, Naruto thought that, the power and memories so prominent moments before were now distant, as if waking from a vivid dream…
Just who was he?
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To be continued...
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AN: If anyone notices any glaringly obvious mistakes, please let me know. Thank you for reading the first chapter.