Author's Note: This is dedicated to nora9gina who very foolishly thought that it was a good idea to try to make me ship. In retribution, I took her favorite ship (Mito/Fem!Kyuubi) which literally no one writes, and I'm going to SINK it.
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Torpedo
because shipping can go die
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Mito was, Kurama thought, a regal woman. Hair red like blood was drawn up into twin buns, braced by a crown of precious jewels that announced her as a true-born princess. Her skin was pale, smooth and flawless, and her body was draped in the finest of silks. Kurama found herself entranced with her beauty.
Entranced, but not fooled.
Never fooled.
Kurama never forgot for one second what her relationship to Mito really was.
"Are you ever going to let me out, woman?" she snarled, casually dangling an arm through the bars of her cage. She had experimented shifting into her human form to try to slip free, but Mito had somehow anticipated that, and the cage had just shrunk with her. Even worse, the cage wouldn't expand again.
Kurama was, for the foreseeable future, stuck in the form of a human woman.
Mito pursed her lips and frowned ever so slightly, and Kurama felt a her hackles raise at the expression. "You should know better than that, Kyūbi," Mito said, her voice ringing with contempt. "This is a prison from which you'll never escape, for I shall not allow it."
Kurama's lips curled back as anger bubbled up deep inside of her. "What right do you have, huh?! Who are you to imprison me?! You're nothing but a mortal worm!"
Mito's other eyebrow rose. "Is that so?"
Kurama screamed and tugged viciously at her prison bars. Normal prisons could never hold her. Wood burned at her touch, and metal grew red-hot and easy to twist and bend. But this cage was different. It resisted her potent chakra, containing her effortlessly. Kurama was helpless.
"Damn you, Mito!" Kurama raged. "Damn you to hell! One day I will be free and Konoha will BURN! I swear it!"
Mito tilted her chin back haughtily, the twin seal formulas hanging from her ears dangling with the motion, and Kurama nearly saw red. "In that case I will make sure you are never freed, Kyūbi. You shall be imprisoned for all of eternity."
That was their relationship in a nutshell.
The years passed since Kurama's imprisonment. Mito came in every so often to check on the state of the prison and make repairs if necessary, and Kurama would always do her level best to antagonize the human.
"You're getting old, woman," Kurama needled, poking her head out as far as it would fit through the bars.
"I'm sure," Mito responded dryly with a roll of her eyes, busying herself with inspecting the paper seal that kept the prison locked. It couldn't be removed from the inside, unfortunately. The irony that her infinite strength was held back by a thin sheet of inked paper was not lost on Kurama. Damnable seals.
"It's true," Kurama insisted, a sharp edge lacing her already mocking voice. "You don't have wrinkles, yet," she said, stressing the word and inwardly rejoicing at the near-invisible twitch she spotted in Mito's eye, "but I can tell that something's going on. You're tired. Your chakra is getting weaker."
Kurama's lips stretched back, revealing unnaturally long teeth that gleamed white in the dim lighting. "Is this, perhaps, a cause for concern?" she laughed, tilting her head back to look down her nose at the now wide-eyed woman.
Mito's abrupt departure was bewildering and satisfying in equal measures. It wasn't often Kurama was able to actually affect Mito. But the real question was why? What had gone right this time?
That was the day that Mito discovered she was pregnant with her first child.
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Uzumaki Mito was, first and foremost, princess of the Uzumaki.
Theirs was a clan famed for their blood-red hair, longevity, and their frightening affinity for sealing jutsu. It was long said that they had blood ties with the Senju of the Forest, and Mito supposed the murmurings were true when a small group of Senju shinobi showed up practically at their doorstep in spite of the many dangerous whirlpools that surrounded their island.
Her eyes fell on the young man with brown eyes and long, dark hair.
His name was Hashirama. That Hashirama. Head of the Senju, the strongest warrior in living memory. Even the Uchiha heeded his power, unless of course, Madara was the one leading the charge.
It was not long before Mito learned why he was in Uzushio.
They were to be married.
They were to be married tomorrow.
Mito didn't know what to think.
She didn't know what to feel.
The ceremony was a grand spectacle, with nearly every member of the clan in attendance. They all laughed and sang and danced the night away.
Mito sat at the front of the hall next to the man she was promised to, dressed in a dress she didn't want to wear, adorned with jewels at felt inordinately heavy and imbalancing. The amulet around her neck was cold.
Hashirama's boisterous laughter sounded hollow to her ears.
Later that night when they were alone, Mito did her duty with a smile, and then they were truly husband and wife.
When Hashirama laid snoring by her side, she stared at the wooden ceiling, wide awake.
Years later after the village had been formed, Uchiha Madara went rogue.
Naturally, Hashirama tore after him.
This is a little-known fact, but Mito followed. While she didn't love the man deeply, she didn't hate him. Hashirama was kind to her, always quick to smile and eager to please. He'd leave her alone when she needed it, and he always knew when she wanted a hug.
Mito admitted it. She would be sad if Hashirama died.
But what could she do in such a battle? What part could she play in a fight amongst gods?
She got her answer when Madara summoned it.
Nine great tails whipped against the sky, and the Kyūbi roared like thunder and death.
She knew what she had to do.
Hashirama eventually wrested the Kyūbi from Madara's control and beat the man into submission. When Madara refused to yield, promising to do everything in his power to destroy Konoha, Hashirama did what he had to. After that day, only one founder remained.
While Hashirama restrained the raging Kyūbi in coils of chakra-infused wood that burned at its very touch, Mito looked within its slitted, hate-filled eyes, took a deep breath, and steeled her resolve.
It snarled and snapped, but Mito paid it no heed. It was not strong enough to get past Hashirama. She had nothing to worry about. Her only job now was to prepare the permanent solution.
She would make herself into a jinchūriki, the first in living memory.
It had been done before, but at great cost to both the jinchūriki and everyone around them. Either the sealing went wrong, or the beasts proved to be too powerful and ripped themselves free. Whatever the case, every account was stained with tragedy and death.
But there was no choice. If they left the Kyūbi roam free, what was to stop another Uchiha Madara from taking control of it again? No, this couldn't be left up to chance.
She finished the last swirl on her stomach with a flick of her wrist, the brush's fine bristles dragging cool ink across her skin. With a silent command, chains of chakra erupted from her back, ensnaring the Kyūbi almost as effectively as Hashirama's wood. The beast screamed at her, but that would do it no good. There was no stopping this.
Within her mind, the Kyūbi's prison appeared as a shrine.
Ankle-deep water covered the floor. Deity gates marked her path, glowing faintly in the darkness. She trudged forth, curiously dry despite the water sucking at her ankles. She came to a stop in front of a great, wooden gate that dominated her vision. Hashirama's influence, no doubt. It made sense that his wood chakra would help form some of the seal's restraints.
The beast glared at her through the bars with a giant red eye, a rumbling growl building up in the back of its throat. Then without warning, it shrank and its shape shifted, the cage shrinking with it.
Mito never knew that the Kyūbi was female.
She was beautiful in a wild, feral manner. Long hair that was red like fire reached down to her back in tangled mane. Her features were sharp and defined, almost regal in appearance. Her smile was wide and full of too many teeth, and her canines were far too long. Her skin was weathered and tanned from a lifetime in the outdoors.
Nine tails of rusty red whipped and churned behind her, a stark reminder of exactly what she was.
Her eyes, though, were what held Mito's attention.
Her eyes were exactly the same as before.
Slitted, and redder than blood.
She was like nothing Mito had ever seen.
When Mito discovered she was pregnant, she panicked. What would this mean for the seal? The Kyūbi said that her chakra was weaker. Did that mean that the seal was weaker?
To her very palpable terror, she discovered that the seal was getting weaker. The bindings were loosening ever so slightly, the flow of chakra disrupted to feed the new life that was growing inside of her. The Kyūbi watched her agitate over the seal with a predatory smile, a promise of what was to come should the seal weaken just enough.
As the baby grew, the seal weakened. The developing fetus, it seemed, required an exponential amount of chakra for proper development, chakra which, unfortunately, was taken directly from maintaining the seal.
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Kurama watched as Mito panicked over the weakening seal, inwardly scoffing to herself.
The woman was truly a fool of the highest order. When she sealed Kurama within herself, she had discarded any chance of a normal life. Jinchūriki were living sacrifices, after all. They were to devote every aspect of themselves to keeping the tailed beasts contained. They were not meant to have children.
In fact, it would be better for her to simply discard the unborn baby. At this stage, no one would ever know.
When she said as much to Mito, the woman merely glared at her with that noble sort of glare that Kurama found adorable, as though Mito thought she could actually intimidate her.
"Is something the matter?" she cooed, her tone high-pitched and patronizing.
Mito stiffened, and her eyes grew murderous. Kurama fell silent as golden chakra chains suddenly whipped forth and lashed around the cage over and over until there was a mere sliver of a gap.
"Even if I have to keep you on triple the restraints, I will not kill my child, and if you so much as touch it I swear to all the gods that nothing will save you."
The thing Kurama first loved about Mito was her unbreakable spirit.
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Author's Note: Lol, Nora, I wasn't actually going to ruin the story. But I did something worse. I made it good, and I made you WANT MORE because this isn't NEARLY satisfying enough. It's a gap that you'll never be able to fill because no one writes this pairing! :D How brilliant am I?