She takes cautious steps up, her trek fails to leave the imprint of her sandaled feet.
Her chakra control is still shaky at best, but she scaled the side of the building with relative success.
The glow of chakra surrounds her hand.
On the hard surface she places it, watching in wonder as the seal matrix etches its secrets forward.
In these etching are foreign chakra signatures, and her curious chakra encounters a familiar one. A faint echo of a raging inferno so similar to her own.
Uzumaki Kushina once worked on this seal complex.
Naruto smiles.
It's a consolation, when she attempted to wheedle potential Uzumaki relics that would be hers for all intents and purposes, that idea was promptly debunked by Sandaime-sama. There were no ancient tomes or crumbling, archiac scrolls harboring secrets of fuinjutsu and the nature of the Uzumaki vitality.
What was left where left were scant few journals and notes left from the Uzumakis that migrated to Konoha. These journals were promised to her once she graduated, a stipulation that had changed from her gaining chunin rank, due to her rapid maturity. Her village idiot persona was becoming a thing of the past, she was carving an image of a keen, perceptive child, or so she's like to think.
She had the distinct impression these journals belonged to her parents and contained ideas, research and thoughts on fuinjutsu. And she idly wondered if the Sandaime would then reveal their identities, or knew she had inkling of who they were.
However, there were more books detailing seals, ones Naruto did not have access to due to her status as a civilian, and once she had her hitai-ate she would gain access to that section of the ninja archive library. Books that were scant in numbers, but held knowledge she craved to devour.
The journals and books could quite possibility have insight on what she was missing regarding Mito's seals.
Mito's seals continued to confound and challenge her. While she had a vague idea of what the unfinished archane runes of the final defense could be capable of, she want to experiment small and then conduct a series of trails. She'lll have the Hokage's official seal once she comes up with a proposal for her plans. For now she's been given the approval to rectify the flaw in Konoha's barrier and hopefully give some reprieve to the Konoha barrier team.
But first she must study the arcane symbols before her and then install her own runic work.
BEFORE
It is a fruitless endeavor.
And it is not the first time she's done it, nor does she suspect it will be the last.
Nonetheless the conclusion of the search is the same, Naruto feels nothing.
Around her is bereft of chakra. The planet is dying, the atmosphere is thinning, all energy drawn to the epicenter where the god tree resides.
And she is alone.
Not truly, never truly.
She reaches out to a familiar chakra signature, and finds nothing.
Her eyes widen, her pupils dilate. With loneliness came fear as her companion, embracing her with cold, unwelcomed arms.
She quickly absconds into her mindscape. She searches through the towering trees. Once or thrice she stops in a field of flowers, on the limb of a tree, around the bend of rivers. And above her the sky becomes a tumultous gray, the clouds dark and low, the roll of thunder.
When she has exhausted every avenue, searched the expansive landscape of her mind; it is empty. She's grasped by the sudden, unrelenting grip of panic. Her breaths come quicker, and her mind begins to race.
Kurama's absence is not a first, but it is the first she could not sense the biju's presence at all.
With the destruction of the ninja world, Kurama's indifference was matched by his slowly dissipating presence. The shift was subtle, and when she brought up the phenomenon Kurama cryptically said this cycle was ending, and soon he would be called for another purpose.
If Kurama is gone that means her time is up. But she's not ready, the seal is not ready, everyone is truly lost to her.
"Kurama!" She yells plaintively, "Kurama!"
When he does not heed to her fifth frantic cry. Naruto falls to her knees, face damp from tears and snot.
"Brat."
At the gruff voice her head snaps up.
He does not appear at once, his presence is hazy, an intangible form attempting to become solid once more. Naruto has to blink a few times, thinking perhaps it's the damp of her eyes, skewing the image of Kurama for she swears she sees wings, and the afterimage of a thousand tails. But what she sees is true, what she sees is an echo, and she has to look away, she must look away, her hackles raise and her senses run haywire. For it is not safe to look until he has reformed, back into the form this plane has created for him.
"Where did you go?" She demands, ever fearless.
"Foolish child," He laughs, "You may turn around."
"Uh-un you said that last time, and what happened!? My eyes bled and nearly exploded."
Kurama laughs gleefully.
"Now where the hell did you go, attebayo!?" Naruto yells, arms gesticulating wildly. And she finally begins to feel the solid presence of him. The vast emptiness becoming no more. Naruto still does not turn to face him, and waits patiently for his explanation.
"Persistent idiot child, to look for a way home," Kurama says cryptically. "The dimensions are shifting, the veil is thin," the biju says almost mournfully and Naruto peaks over her shoulder, "That is the way home." Something ancient, and eldritch shifts behind his eyes.
And Naruto has to look away again, for something unfathomable crawls up and down her spine.
She is reminded once more that Kurama is not all that he seems.
Naruto sits within her pocket dimension, around clones are engaged in Uzuken katas.
However, Naruto's attention is diverged, in her hands is a seed. She calls chakra in her hands watching as the seed blossoms and blooms, her hands filled with warmth. Then the chakra shifts, the intent for life, for cellular growth perishes as she facilitates the plants death. Her eyes are riveted as the plant rapidly wilts and then turn to earth.
Dust to dust.
This is fascinating. Her mind begins to race with questions and possibilities.
This changes things, well certain points of her plans. She wonders if this can be used on beings of flesh and blood, to render what was living dead on a molecular level, if she can control how quickly or slowly necrosis can go.
She pauses, and is struck by a sudden whim. She lets the earth fall from her hands and forms an orb, slowly feeding it chakra. As the orb grows, she forms a smaller orb within its circumference, and then another. Naruto watches this with wide eyes and bated breath, and then introduces elemental chakra into the two smaller spheres. For a moment the jutsu holds, two rasenshuriken within a gudodama, and then collapses in upon itself. Coalescing and then exploding, the aftermath leaving Naruto with deep bodily gashes and her hands a mangled mess of blood, flesh, bone and ruined nerves.
She has suffered worse, but she screams nonetheless. Her clones pause their training and take in the scene of her injured, then scramble over to her, ready for the arduous task of helping her reset her bones as they heal back.
It takes an hour, Naruto grits her teeth, bites her lips bloody and has to reset most of her fingers thrice, before the damage is healed. She raises her hands and accesses them, the skin is smooth and their movement different but mostly unhindered, it would do for now.
Now she had burning questions. What she attempted to do, nay almost succeeded, should not be possible. While she has retained her knowledge, her muscle memory, chakra control, and discipline were lost and something she is attempting to rectify. She's under no illusions that it would come easy, but she was making steady progress. Nevertheless, what she just did would have taken at least a year, perhaps two to attempt in this child body of hers.
Something here is not quite right, something here is does not belong, something here is wrong.
"Kurama..."
Naruto turns to the only being with answers, "Is this your doing?"
Her vision shifts as the world around her darkens. The kyuubi appears before her, shrouded in a golden aura, massive head resting lazily on his paws. He does not diegn to open his eyes as he state:
"You will need every advantage at your behest."
"Is this... wise for you to do?" Naruto questions hesitantly, but her blue eyes are sharp. "You said you were bound by rules, that your actions were limited to whatever role you had to play in every cycle."
"The ties that bind me are snapping,"Kurama says simply.
"That is why the seal worked, why were we able to in time. At least that is why I came back in one piece, in the correct universe," Naruto deduces.
Kurama snorts, 'And just when I wonder if you are truly stupid, you surprise me with a bout of intelligence."
Naruto makes a sound of indignation, and yells a fuck off, Kurama ignores her. "Yes, time has been tampered with, I've sped up your progress. As your ally-"
"Friend," Naruto corrects. Kurama gives her a gimblet eye.
"-As your ally, this is part the support I will give you."
"Yah, yah, I hear ya, but still are you sure your interfering is a good idea?" Naruto questions once more.
"Naruto you made a promise, I will have my reckoning."
"And I never back down on my promises-"
"Beleive it." Kurama finishes dryly. Some would question the sanity of an individual who would promise to help the remnant of a primordial being find a passage home to at the risk of unraveling the very fabric of the ninja world.
It's simply one of the insurmountable tasks she must fulfill.
And where Naruto is concerned, expect the unexpected.
