AN: And here is the eagerly awaited initial meeting with the kyuubi. While it's not an instant 'partnership=forever' like I've seen in some fics - which honestly makes no sense to me - they're at least cordial with one another, which is something canon!Naruto didn't manage for a good while. I had fun with what I did to Kurama in this chapter, I actually had to stop writing I was laughing so hard, so I hope you enjoy it!
Beta'd by: The trolling SnarkLord
Chapter 14 – Nine Tails
When he could no longer hear the sounds of the forest, the wind rustling the leaves and the grass, the creak of old trees, and the breath of the wild, Naruto opened his eyes. He expected to see something that was either very literal or very metaphorical, perhaps how his mind would interpret the seal.
What he saw was a large, earthen tunnel, like something a rabbit, fox, or badger would make into their home. It was much larger than any tunnel that Naruto had ever seen though, which made sense as the biju were supposed to be the size of mountains.
Getting to his feet, Naruto looked around, taking note of everything around him. Honestly, he was expecting… well, more of his mindscape. This was kind of boring in all honestly, where were the representations of his memories and thoughts? Was this what the Yamanaka clan saw when they used their mental jutsus on someone?
Wandering down the tunnel, Naruto soon came across what must have been the seal itself. A massive gate, stretching from the ground up to the ceiling, apparently held shut by nothing more than a scrap of paper with something written on it. That seemed rather flimsy to Naruto, he'd expected a lock of some sort that required a key of some description. Right now it looked like he'd be able to break the seal with minimal effort.
"Hello!" Naruto called out. "Is anyone there?"
Naruto paused, hearing movement in the darkness behind the seal. A few moments later, the nine-tails stepped into the light, revealing itself in all of it's glory. A magnificent creature, massive and powerful, with nine waving tails behind it.
"I thought you'd be bigger." Naruto couldn't help but comment.
The kyuubi's eyes narrowed. "I used to be, before your damned father ripped me in two!" It spat at the blonde boy.
"My father?" Naruto asked, surprised to hear something about his parent's from the nine-tai- "Wait, the only one that had anything to do with you was the Yondaime Hokage!"
"Your point?" The kyuubi growled. "Did you not know who daddy dearest was?"
"No, I didn't." Naruto admitted. "Wait, that's not what I'm here about. I actually came to talk to you."
"And I care because?" The kyuubi snorted. "If you're here to demand my chakra, I'm not giving it up. That's what you want, right?"
"Not really." Naruto shook his head. "I have so much reiryoku and my current techniques take up so little that it'll be a long time before I need to even think about needing more power."
"Then why are you here?" The kyuubi asked.
"Honestly, I'm not entirely sure myself." Naruto shrugged. "It's just, I've had this seal on me since I don't know when, and it seems really stupid to know nothing about it, so… here I am."
"Good for you, now leave, I have nothing to say to you." The kyuubi said.
"Do you mind if I ask a few questions first? I mean, there's so much I don't know about you." Naruto questioned the fox. "Why did you attack Konoha? What were you doing before that? What sort of things have you seen in your life?" He frowned, before adding on one more question. "Why are you being so… polite?"
"What makes you think I had a reason for attacking your village, maybe it was just in my way?" The fox shot back, though there was something in its voice that Naruto couldn't recognise.
"Well, you've been around for centuries, if not millennia, right? You've been around longer than recorded history at least." Naruto said. "So you must have lived somewhere else than around humans, and if you truly did hate humans as much as the books claim, you'd have wiped us out long ago. It's only in the last century or so that we've had the knowledge of how to seal something as powerful as you."
"So you're not unintelligent." The kyuubi huffed. "Fine then, if you wish to know so badly, I will tell you. When I was torn out of my previous vessel, I had barely a moment's freedom before one of those damned red-eyes forcefully took over my mind and made me attack your village."
"Red eyes?" Naruto wondered who that referred to. "And you were forced as well?"
"Don't get me wrong, child, I would have gladly destroyed that village for all that it has done to me, regardless of whether I was controlled or not. As for the 'red eyes', I am of course talking about the Uchiha clan." The kyuubi informed him.
"I see." Naruto muttered, and the kyuubi watched in silence as Naruto sat there and thought over things by himself for a few minutes. Occasionally, one of his mutters was loud enough for the kyuubi to hear it, but without any context, none of it made any sense.
Eventually, Naruto stood up and spoke to the kyuubi again. "You've told me who my father was, could you tell me who my mother was?"
"Kushina Uzumaki, my previous vessel." The kyuubi answered him.
"You said you were 'ripped in two', what did you mean by that?" Naruto then asked.
The kyuubi growled angrily, snarling as it bared its teeth. "The damned Yondaime summoned the shinigami! What did you think that fucking thing did?! I've seen through your eyes, I know what you know, and you know that the shinigami isn't needed to seal a biju away. That fucking bastard ripped my soul in two pieces! I'm only half of the kyuubi, the yang half specifically!"
"He did what?!" Naruto yelled, and the kyuubi was taken aback by the horror in the child's voice. "He ripped a soul in two! Why the hell would anyone do something like that, that's terrible!"
"Something we can agree on." The kyuubi snorted. "Now is there anything else you wish to say, or are you going to leave me in peace?"
"Just a few things." Naruto said, getting himself under control. "First, there's two more consciousnesses in this seal, have you any idea where they are or how to awaken them?"
"I'm inside the seal, how the hell would I be able to tell you anything about it?" The kyuubi retorted.
"Okay, second, do you want to stay in this seal?" Naruto asked.
The kyuubi froze at that, its eyes narrowing at the blonde boy. "What are you implying by that? I doubt you're just going to free me, not when doing so would kill you, so what is it you're suggesting? Just how would I be able to get out of here?"
"Well, I just thought of it, so I don't know if it will work or not, but hear me out, okay?" Naruto said. "We both know some of your chakra is leaking through this seal and into me, so there's at least a small hole in there somewhere, right? On top of that, a biju is a mass of intelligent, self-sustaining chakra. I was just thinking that if I mould some of your chakra properly, you might be able to possess it. Most of your power would still be behind the seal, but your mind would be free at least."
"An… interesting idea." The kyuubi commented. "How would you shape my chakra, and how would I possess it?"
"You said that you've seen through my eyes, right? That means you know about my shikigami." Naruto asked.
"I have spent most of your boring life asleep." The nine-tails admitted. "It's only recently that I've bothered remaining awake long enough to take note of anything, and even then I've slept through a lot of it. I know of your shiki though, you've used them often enough that I've seen you use them, but what use are they? You create them and they obey you, that's it."
"That's how basic ones work, yes." Naruto agreed. "However, that's just the simple ones. More advanced shiki can be possessed, and Hinoe says she'll teach me an exploding version of them in the future too. I was thinking that if I power a possessive shiki with your chakra, you could then possess it through that link."
"That sounds reasonable, and it's something the Yondaime probably didn't account for regarding this seal." The Kyuubi agreed. "However, there is one problem. I know that your seals use pure reiryoku, yin chakra as humans call it, and I am the yang half of the kyuubi."
"Then I guess I'll have to experiment then." Naruto shrugged. "I have a few ideas already about how to make it work, though I don't know if they'll be successful. That's if you're willing to work with me on this."
The kyuubi was silent for a few moments, contemplating Naruto's offer. "I refuse to give you access to my chakra… however, I won't fight you for control during your attempts to get me out of here. After that… well, we'll see what happens then."
"Alright then!" Naruto stood up. "See you later, I'd better get started practising and experimenting then." He waved at the kyuubi before vanishing from his mindscape.
The kyuubi huffed. "What a strange human." It said.
xxxxx
Naruto opened his eyes once again in the real world. Immediately, he got to his feet and turned to Hinoe.
"Hey, do you know of a way for seals to use almost pure ki instead of reiryoku?" He asked straight away.
Hinoe blinked in surprise at the question. "No, I don't. Youkai rely purely on reiryoku, so there's no reason for any of us to look at ki at all. Why?"
"I'm going to try and make a possession shikigami for the kyuubi, which is apparently only half of the kyuubi, the yang half, which is why I asked." Naruto said, his sentence getting a little confused as he explained what he wanted.
"Well, reiryoku and ki are supposed to be complimentary opposites, so the only thing I can suggest is inverting the symbols for the seals." Hinoe shrugged. "That's the best guess I have as of right now."
"Right, okay, I'll try that." Naruto nodded, already reaching for a bit of paper and a pencil. "What extra symbols do I need for a possession shikigami, and where do I add them?"
"You're going to try it right now?" Hinoe asked.
"I might as well, no?" Naruto responded.
"If you say so." Hinoe sighed. "Just let me look over this seal before you activate it, okay?" She then took a scrap of paper herself and quickly sketched out what a regular possession shiki looked like.
"Right, let's try this." Naruto focused, and slowly began to copy the symbols out, but rather than draw them as they were, he drew around them, like a colouring in exercise. It took him quite a bit longer than it would have normally, partially because he was using a few new symbols, but also because this was harder than just drawing the symbols themselves.
Once he'd finished it, and Hinoe had checked it over, he held it in his hand as he reached inside of himself, searching for the kyuubi's ki. It took him some time, as he was far more used to using reiryoku, and even when he did find it, he had trouble properly grasping the incredibly dense ki, but he did it.
As he held onto the power with hands that were more mental than physical, Naruto could feel the kyuubi's curiosity and anticipation as he funnelled all of that power into the talisman he held in his hand. Such a flimsy thing, a scrap of ordinary paper with pencil marks on it, and he was hoping it would be able to hold the power of something that could crush mountains with ease or cause tsunamis? When did the world stop making sense?
Naruto hissed in pain as bubbling, red chakra flowed out of his hand and into the talisman. He threw it away from himself and cradled his raw and throbbing hand. The kyuubi's dense power had flayed the flesh from his hand, despite the small amount of contact it had had, and now he was bleeding quite badly.
Holding his hand close, Naruto looked at the talisman now on the ground as the red substance began to expand and take form. Unlike his regular shiki, this one actually looked more defined, and less like a blob-thing. It looked far more solid, probably due to the far denser and more potent power used to make it.
Eventually, the red blob took the form of a fox, a regular fox that is and not one with the torso and hands of a human. It only had a single tail too. The thing was…
It was tiny, only about the size of an adult's clenched fist.
"Um, this is a surprise." Naruto commented. "I expected it to be inefficient, but this?"
"Why am I so small?!" The kyuubi yelled, still retaining its deep voice despite its size.
"Probably because this is the first time we've even tried to use ki for a reiryoku style talisman?" Naruto guessed. "Even with as dense as your ki is, with this much power, if you were formed of reiryoku, I'd expect you to be up to my shoulder at least, if not higher."
"Fix this!" The kyuubi yelled at him. "Make me bigger! The size of a regular fox at least, not this tiny little form!"
Naruto picked the kyuubi up, which now fit quite comfortably in the palm of his hand.
"This is the best we can do right now." He shrugged. "We'll try a few other things as we get more ideas, but we didn't even know if this was going to work at all, you know." He protested.
The kyuubi huffed, before making its way along Naruto's arm and onto his shoulder, whereupon it sank its teeth into his flesh. Naruto yelped, but wasn't too hurt. As sharp as its teeth were, the kyuubi's fangs were smaller than individual pieces of gravel.
"Hey!" He shouted. "We'll get you bigger, but it's not like we know what we're doing! It'll take time, just be patient, okay?"
"Oh, and how are you going to do that?" It asked.
"Well, we tried using inverted reiryoku symbols to make a ki seal and it worked, yeah?" Naruto pointed out. "All we have to do now is isolate how it worked, which variations work better, and then… construct an entirely new language to compliment one that already exists." He sighed. "Man, this is going to suck!"
"And what am I supposed to do in the meantime? At this size, I'd be a tasty snack for a damn sparrow!" The kyuubi complained.
"Well you could just stay with Naruto, that would keep you safe." Hinoe suggested. "Besides that, I don't know, what skills do you still have from when you were larger?"
The kyuubi wasn't happy about that suggestion, but it had to agree that sticking by Naruto was probably its best bet while it was so tiny. As for what it could do… well, the only skill it really had was the bijudama, and while it was this tiny, what could such a technique do?
Deciding to try it out, the kyuubi spat a pinhead sized ball of compressed energy at a nearby tree.
To the surprise of everyone, the kyuubi included, the ball of energy exploded when it hit the tree, tearing a basketball-sized hole in it.
"That was awesome!" Naruto exclaimed. "Teach me, please!"
"There's nothing much to teach!" The kyuubi tried to back up, not at all sure how to react to Naruto's sparkly eyes. "It's just a ball of compressed chakra, that's it!"
"Compressed energy, huh?" Naruto pondered, already thinking. He called a fireball to his hand, but rather than just spin it, he tried to pull it together. His grin almost split his face in two as the fireball got a shade smaller than it was before, and the spinning got faster as well. Trying to compress it further, Naruto began to sweat at the effort. Apparently compressing reiryoku was a lot harder than simply shaping it. Still, it was an interesting idea and something else to work on.
The kyuubi watched without comment as it saw the fireball in Naruto's hand, holding back a snarl. It looked to it like the Yondaime's 'rasengan', a pale imitation of a bijudama. There were differences though, the most obvious one being that the rasengan was made up of multiple layers of chakra rotating in separate directions, whereas this fireball only span one way. The Yondaime had never managed to make an elemental version of the rasengan though, and his kid looked to be well on the way to doing so.
"Ah well, I'll work on this some other time." Naruto sighed, seemingly a little disappointed in his attempt at emulating the signature attack of the tailed beasts. "For now… what was I doing again? There's so much on the list I don't even know where to start."
Benio gave the kyuubi an amused look. "As much as I'd like to suggest you work with Takame and Masami on how to fight, the midget looks like he'll try and tear your throat out if he doesn't get bigger some time soon."
Takame shook her head. "I would only ask a minimum of an hour a day from Naruto, though I would prefer two. It doesn't matter to me when myself and Masami get that time, just that we do. If he wants to work on something else in his own time then he is free to do as he pleases."
Hinoe chuckled. "Naruto is advancing quickly in what I am teaching him. If I have him for an hour and half a day, I believe I can teach him all that I know in… oh, roughly five years I'd say. He may not even take that long, it all depends on how quickly it takes him to succeed at the tasks I give him."
"I do have school you know." Naruto commented dryly. "And you know that the kappa will bother me to no end if I don't play with them every now and then." He sighed. "Saying that, I can dedicate some time each day to trying to work out a language for ki seals… and I can't believe I just said that."
"Why not, brat?" The kyuubi asked. "Doesn't the thought of success, of doing what no one else has ever done, make you feel accomplished?"
"It's not that." Naruto shook his head. "It's actually a really damn awesome idea, and just the thought of actually managing to do that makes me fell ten feet tall! It's just… apart from you, who's going to bother with it? The only reason you actually care about it is because the Yondaime tore your soul in half."
"Why do your reiryoku seals matter then? You're the only one who's going to use them, every other ninja out there is just going to use regular fuinjutsu." The kyuubi commented.
"But it's not just me, is it?" Naruto protested. "All youkai use reiryoku, and while not many of them bother with seals or techniques, it's still more than just me." The blonde boy recalled the scrolls he'd collected from Iron Country. While most of them had been about myths and legends of the youkai, there'd been a handful of useful stuff in there too. There'd been a seal that would make youkai visible to regular humans, and even one that-
"Hey, Hinoe!" Naruto suddenly turned to the woman in question. "You remember that seal that would let me summon youkai that had given me their names? Could we modify that so it would be, you know, less binding?"
"In theory, yes." Hinoe said. "However, I wouldn't know where to start with it, and I've already told you how important a youkai's name is."
That was right. If a youkai gave up their name, they would be putting themselves under the complete control of someone else. They were literally incapable of disobeying their 'masters', giving up their free will utterly. Naruto wasn't particularly comfortable with such a thought, even when he'd been assured that it was a sign of immense respect to be given a name freely and without having to force it from someone.
Naruto looked at the kyuubi. "I don't suppose you know how summoning contracts work, do you? I only know that they exist and who has some of the more famous ones."
"I know that toads are fat and heavy." The fox groused. "As for the contracts themselves, all I know is that the summoner signs their name in blood and their fingerprints are below that."
"The summoner signs the contract?" Hinoe asked. "Not the summoning clan?"
"Yes." The kyuubi nodded its tiny head.
"Hmm, perhaps the summoner makes themselves part of the summoning clan." Hinoe mused. "The contract wouldn't need a true name if a human's birth name is enough, so perhaps..." She trailed off, before shaking her head. "I have a few ideas, but we'll shelve them for now. I'm already trying to work out a way to emulate a ninja's high speed movement technique, and I really don't need something else on my mind at the same time."
"How is that going anyway?" Naruto asked.
"Better than it might otherwise, but there's no complete success yet." She shrugged. "I can get them to move at the right speed, but they don't exactly come out of it in one piece. I'm having to alter what I've already got down of the technique so it also reinforces the body while also accelerating it to the required speeds. It's a balancing act of effect versus result. After all, it's pointless making a technique if it costs too much reiryoku to use."
"If it's a technique for blondie here, don't worry about how much power it takes." The kyuubi interrupted her. "Even without my own chakra leaking into his coils and expanding them, he has top-tier Uzumaki reserves, and they were real chakra monsters amongst humans."
"Really?" Naruto asked. "That's interesting. It still doesn't make much difference though, the techniques I use aren't large-scale, so it'll still take a very long time for me to burn through all of my reserves."
"Accuracy and efficiency over collateral damage?" The kyuubi mused.
"Well, there's probably going to be a point in the future where I'll likely need something big, but I'm not even an academy student yet, much less an actual ninja. I have plenty of time to learn what I have to, so why go to the big stuff first rather than work my way up to it?" Naruto shrugged.
Tsurara leaned over Naruto's shoulder to look at the tiny fox. "By the by, kyuubi, aside from that exploding thing you used on that poor tree, what can you do?"
"That's about it, I've never actually needed anything else." The fox shrugged. "Then again, I used to be more reasonably sized, and where a bijudama didn't work raw strength served me just fine."
Hinoe looked at the kyuubi curiously. "In that case, would you care to learn how to do other things? Perhaps you would like to breathe streams of fire, electricity, or even acid." She suggested. "Finding out how differently you manipulate your ki might even make it easier to modify the talismans so you can become larger than you currently are."
"I've never cared for the techniques of humans before." The kyuubi admitted. "I've never needed them either, but in this case you can count me as a willing student."
"Very well then." Hinoe clapped her hands together. "While Naruto is at school, I'll teach you what I can and we'll see what happens. Perhaps we can even find out a way for you to fight with more grace than you currently do. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you've won all your previous fights with nothing more than brute strength, correct?"
"Like I said, I've never needed anything else." The mini-kyuubi responded dryly. "This will make for an… interesting change."
Hinoe smiled, and it was a very strange smile.
"Oh, I'm sure it will be." She said.
xxxxx
Several days later, Naruto was practising his archery.
Shin had been right when he'd said a bit of wood from a kodama tree would handle reiryoku better. His current bow's core was made from just such a material, and despite being created several times over already, there didn't seem to be any visible damage to the core yet.
He was also experimenting with different 'arrows'. Flame arrows, from his fire manipulation practice, came easily to him. Pure reiryoku arrows were both simpler and harder at the same time. They were simple in the way he didn't have to convert his reiryoku into fire, but as he hadn't practised making such arrows much, it actually took mental effort to not habitually make them out of fire.
He could make arrows of light as well, though they weren't particularly effective as a weapon due to them not doing any actual damage, either physical or spiritual. He was trying to form other arrow types as well, but it was slow going for now. Not that he was having no success, it was just that they took so long to form that they just weren't a viable option in an actual fight.
Deciding to practise making such arrows, Naruto felt for the wind, pulling it together into the shape he needed it to be. Wind arrows were good for blunt force in Naruto's experience. They were good for knocking things over or pushing them back with little damage, and if they followed chakra theory, then they could also be enhanced by fire techniques, but he hadn't found a way to test that out yet.
After raising his bow properly, Naruto took aim, releasing the wind arrow as he exhaled.
He grinned as he hit the target he was aiming for, and then began to prepare a different arrow type. His accuracy had gone up fairly quickly once he'd gotten the hang of actually using a yumi bow. The way to do it was remain calm while you fired an arrow, and experience would help you adjust for wind and distance. He didn't have much experience yet, but give him time and he'd manage.
Looking at the arrow he had created, one of crackling electricity, Naruto gulped nervously. Electricity was one of the five 'ninja' elements, but it was also very hard for Naruto to create and control. He would get better though, electric arrows flew through the air the fastest and penetrated the target the deepest, making them his most effective arrow type. If only it didn't take him twenty seconds to create and stabilise a single one of them!
"That's an interesting way to fight." A deep voice said from off to the side.
Not jumping much in surprise, Naruto turned to the kyuubi – for who else did he know who spoke in bold? - and asked him what he meant by that.
"In my experience, ninja prefer to throw little bits of metal at each other or toss their elemental techniques about the place. I do not believe I have ever seen a ninja actually use a bow at all." It responded.
"Well why not?" Naruto said. "It's an effective weapon, isn't it? It's got a better range than a kunai or shuriken, or it will when I get better with it, and using some sort of massive elemental dragon to kill one guy just seems like all kinds of overkill to me."
"As opposed to an army of shikigami? If you're playing the game that way, you should not be pointing fingers either." The kyuubi commented.
"I'm neither fast nor strong enough to fight on equal footing with people so much better than me." Naruto wryly stated. "When I get stronger, my shiki will be by my side when I need the numbers. Besides, is there something wrong with having an entire army at my beck and call at any moment? It's an effective tactic, no?"
The kyuubi snorted. "My previous vessel, your mother, thought much the same. She used to toss some sort of clone, shadow I think, about the place like candy. It was only made worse when she started actually creating techniques of her own, it's part of the reason she was as feared as much as she was."
"My mother created techniques?" Naruto asked curiously.
"Never anything particularly strong." The kyuubi told him. "But she was almost Uchiha-like in how many she had, and she was a tricky bitch with a tendency towards humiliating her opponents before killing them. It wasn't intentional, at least I don't think it was, she was simply a natural prankster. The seal used to restrain me within her was an absolute bitch and a half, but watching her defeat other humans was rather entertaining."
"What sort of seal did she have?" Naruto wondered aloud.
The kyuubi growled. "I was chained to a fucking rock and pinned down like a trampoline. Your seal at least gave me a little room to move, and Mito's was hurriedly put together so it was also better than your redhead bitch of mother's seal." He snorted. "You know she actually came to see me in the seal at one point and said that she would 'defeat' me. Apparently Mito told her that only love could counter the hatred within me."
"Wait, what did you do that was so wrong that everyone thought you were some sort of avatar of hatred?" Naruto wondered.
"Fuck all." The kyuubi snarled. "Madara 'fucking' Uchiha mind-fucked me to be his toy, and then Hashirama 'fucking' Senju shoved a tree up my ass, decided I was too powerful to wander around without human supervision. When I was finally freed of your mother, another fucking Uchiha mind-fucked me once again!"
"It sounds like your the victim more than anything there, kyuubi." Naruto frowned. "Especially with what the fourth did to you. Just why did he decide to rip you in two?"
"Your guess is as good as mine." The kyuubi sighed. "By the way, my name's not 'kyuubi', it's Kurama."
"And mine's Naruto, as you know." The blonde smiled. "It's nice to meet you, Kurama."