Chapter 4

Kurami roamed the snow-covered lands for a few more days, but found that the enjoyment wasn't as much as it had been before.

Between the cold-blooded sacrifice of children to 'appease her' and her subsequent annihilation of the village, one she had been observing and learning about for a while, she just didn't find much enjoyment in being up there anymore. Sure, she still enjoyed burrowing under giant snow-banks, feeling the cold snow as it parted and brushed against her, the chill being surprisingly soothing, but any time she saw humans and their tribes, she was reminded of how she was seen now.

That was the first time she began to comprehend what the thing that sent her here had said. 'An eternity of combat and captivity.' Well, she wasn't really a captive, but she knew that with the developing Chakra that humans were receiving, they would weaponize it, as had already happened with that guy spitting fireballs at her, and then they would turn it against each other, and against her and her siblings.

Of course, she and her siblings all had far more Chakra than a human could ever muster, sure, but humans were smart. There were plenty of predators that were stronger, faster and tougher than humans, but humans found a way to circumvent that natural gap, cementing their place as top god thanks to their intelligence and numbers. it was like the saying with monkeys and typewriters, if enough of them hammered away, eventually they would write anything and everything, including the cure for cancer, or a lost work of an ancient writer, we just wouldn't know it.

Enough humans looking for ways to capture or kill them and eventually, someone would figure it out. With Chakra, they had the same position against she and the others as humans had against other animals, putting them in the position of being able to at least begin to figure things out. Right now, she was just grateful that the only people living who knew Fuinjutsu were Asura and Indra. Sure, they were now feuding, but she highly doubted either brother would turn against she and her siblings, not in such a flagrant desecration of their fathers will.

But then again...if they caught it to their children and the feud continued down to their children, and they passed it down further and further, they would forget that the Bijuu were ever so closely tied to their families, and might seek to force them to fight for them. Fuinjutsu was, after all, a major part of the reason why Hagoromo and Hamura had defeated the Juubi and split it into her and the others. If the humans could learn to harness it as well as Hagoromo had...she dreaded to imagine how humans could bend it around itself and make it do things she couldn't even comprehend.

Shaking her head, she refocused on her current task. She was crossing the sea back to the mainland, passing the large islands dotting the water, as the snow-covered land she had been roaming just wasn't where she wanted to be now. Being honest with herself, she wasn't sure where she wanted to end up. She didn't really want to be around the area where Indra and Asura were, as the pair would still be squabbling and would probably ask her to help them make their brother see reason.

Chomei had bumped into her in the Shinso Shinn and told her that to the east was a massive desert, so that direction was immediately out. In her past life she had hated hot temperatures, and she had no want to see if it was different in this life. From the fact she loved the cold so much still, she presumed it would be the same as before. No, she had gone straight south using the sun to orient herself, and when she hit land, she was going to head to the west and see if there was anything to find in that direction. The snow to the north told her that as long as she stayed on the mainland and kept to the north and to the coast, she would hopefully find more snow-capped areas to live.

It was slow-going, but she was steadily mapping out her new world, piece by piece.

"So fluffy!"

Grinning, she felt the body of the little girl rolling across her side. "Just be careful." She said rolling her eyes. "So, how is your village going? Still expanding I'd hope?" Sat on a chair beside her, Hasara...or maybe it was meant to be Denso, nodded, his eyes occasionally glancing towards his daughter, as if making sure she was still alright. "Want a hand?...Well, paw."

"Thank you, but I think your presence would probably slow everyone down more than anything. Especially if they saw you wandering towards the village with a stack of trees on your back." Kurami snorted at that mental image. "I can't deny you'd be helpful, but if word got out that one as large and powerful las you was at the village, any who might seek to live there might be dissuaded and head elsewhere. Worse, it might even draw the ire of the warrior clans around us, and we have no way to defend ourselves from them."

She hummed at that, the action making the girl on her side giggle as she was bumped about by it. "I guess." That was all the words she offered as she peered out at the forest. Kurami had come back since she felt like seeing the cute little girl who held no real fear of her, her only evidence that humans could see her as something other than a giant and dangerous monster.

That didn't mean she didn't have another reason, and that was the spark of power she could feel in the little girl. Now that she was more accustomed to such small amounts of Chakra, she could feel that small sprite of power she held. It was probably about the same amount as the guy who spat a fireball or three at her, which meant her theory was proven correct, that as more generations were born in the now chakra-soaked world, they would be born with more Chakra until they hit a baseline amount. There would be anomalies both ways, obviously, but an average would be found eventually.

She wanted to tell Hasara, but wasn't sure how he'd take it if a giant fox told him that his daughter was going to be able to spit fireballs and do other stuff. But then again, if she didn't do anything with it, wasn't that a waste? But, in the end, she supposed that it should be Areta's decision. It was her body and her power, nobody else's. When she got to an appropriate age, maybe 16, and was able to make her own decisions, she would tell her of what she contained and ask whether she'd like to be taught at least what little Kurami knew of how to manipulate it to do things.

She was about ten right now, so she had 6 years to grow up and learn, then she could tell her about her Chakra and what she could do with it. Maybe nothing would amount to it, but the girl was adorable and, well maybe it was a bit biased or some other weird sociological term but she wanted to teach the girl how to use her Chakra, even if in the end it didn't matter.

Kurami was immortal after all. Physical damage wouldn't be able to kill her, the only thing she knew that could do anything that would stick was Fuinjutsu, because she was literally made of Chakra. If her entire body was disintegrated, she would just reform elsewhere, alive and probably exceptionally pissed off. That did take a bit of the threat out of things, but the warning from the thing that sent her there kept her focused enough to not become lax.

But it also meant that getting attached to people was a terrible idea. She had no idea about whether there was maybe some way to make people immortal using Chakra, though it seemed unlikely since Hagoromo would probably have found and used it to extend his life so he might better guide the world and ensure that in the aftermath of his fight with the Juubi, they wouldn't misuse the Chakra they were now being filled with.

Then again, he was one of the sorts who would rather place his faith in others and go out peacefully.

Flicking her head slightly, Kurami spat out a small ball of Chakra, which impacted the floor and exploded into a ball of fire the size of a dumpster.

Grinning, she did it again, forming a ball of un-natured Chakra in her chest, then inside of it she focused on making the Chakra hot simply by telling the Yin side of it to be flame, then using the Yang side to bring that into reality, changing it from un-natured Chakra to Fire-natured Chakra. To avoid having it explode in her mouth, she left a thin layer of completely unnatured Chakra on the outer edge. This also held the ball in its small form until it hit the target, upon which all the Chakra contained within burst out in a fiery explosion.

And this was currently as small as she was physically able to make it. She was still working at trying to draw smaller amounts of Chakra out of herself, especially at speed. It took her a few seconds to form the Chakra ball, then re-nature it, and finally spit it out. She wanted to make it so that creating the balls was something she could do in under a second.

There was also the thought of using more of the internal space in her body to produce the balls, then being able to spit them out in a rapid-fire style, creating more balls in the empty space and thus maintaining an infinite supply of them. That, however, wasn't really something she could work on until she was able to produce them and not be worried that their containment would break and she'd end up just puffing out a breath of flames...actually, that sounded like another great idea.

Having that random idea brought her mood back down a little. One thing that really irritated her sometimes was her sheer bulk. It made it impossible to write things down, and since she was naturally rather forgetful, she was likely going to forget about that accidental discovery. Folding up her legs and sitting down comfortably, she created another fireball, spitting it out at the same patch of empty ground she had targetted with the last few.

She knew that it would be all too easy to set the forests she was inhabiting on fire by being careless with her new fireballs, so as long as she targetted the same spot, the danger was minimized. While she monotonously practiced producing the fireballs, she thought about her siblings, or at least those smart enough to heed what she had said and try to learn to use their Chakra properly.

Shukaku was understandably rather smug when he discovered that, though he had the least Chakra out of all of them, he was able to control sand pretty much however he wanted to. Matatabi had no innate ability, nor did Isobu, Son Goku or Kokuo. Saiken was able to excrete various substances like acid, sticky fluid or even acidic gas. Chomei was obviously able to fly, but she could also deliberately shed the scales from her wings which was incredibly reflective and bright, even for her. Gyuki was able to produce ink, owing to his octopus-like nature.

Kurami had no innate natural ability to produce any sort of material, nor was she able to manipulate any matter she had come across. While a bit of a let-down, she did amuse herself with the thought that she was still the eldest and the most powerful of them all, so even if Shu started getting funny ideas about being strong because he could control sand, she'd just have to make some glass.

Distracted by the amusing thought, she put a little too much Chakra into her fireball and lit a few trees on fire, quickly patting them down using her tails and extinguishing the accidental blaze before it could grow. As she did so, she began to wonder what else she could make the fireball into. It surely didn't have to stay as fire, not if it used her own imagination to decide what its nature was.

Following this train of thought, Kurami instead changed the next ball she made. Instead of telling the Yin to be heated, she instead told it to be water, using her Yang Chakra to bring this to reality. Cocooned within a layer of Chakra, she pushed extra un-natured Chakra into the ball, before launching it from her mouth. As it hit the ground the ball broke, unleashing a torrent of water that caught her by surprise and soaked her fur, making her grumble as she got up and shook herself off.

Plodding away from the newly-made puddle, she went to go find somewhere dry to experiment with her new ability.

As she fired out a new ball of Chakra, she grinned, watching it fly and smack into a solid rock wall then break.

The breaking of the ball unveiled her newest change to her Chakra Balls, as a pool of acid sprayed out from the ball and began melting the rock. After making her discovery, she had gone on to attempt various different elements, all of which had worked. The fact was that she was relying on using Yin Chakra, which was influenced by her imagination alone, to hold what she wanted, then using Yang and merging them together to bring her imagination to life.

Because of that, pretty much every Chakra Ball she fired was a success, except for the few that had too little Chakra. Lava, Ice, Lightning, Wind, all were turned into Chakra Balls and fired. Even more abstract concepts like light and darkness. Light would make essentially a flashbang, whilst darkness shrouded the area temporarily in pure blackness.

There were a few she didn't try to use like 'void' or 'black hole', since she didn't want to accidentally break reality and kill the planet. But for the most part, if she could picture it, her Chakra Balls could do it. The only issue was that they relied so heavily on her imagination, so she had to be able to picture something for it to work. She had managed to nature a ball with 'shrink', and ended up making herself tiny, then did the opposite to make herself even bigger than normal.

She didn't want to keep increasing how much power she put into her Chakra Balls for fear of accidentally causing a massive explosion or some other large-scale effect, ignoring the damage she'd already wrought. Endlessly amusing, however, was the reactions of her siblings when she saw them in the Shinso Shinn and told them of what she had achieved. Aside from Chomei, none of the others had managed to anything more than undirected destruction with their chakra. Even then, Chomei had only managed to achieve directed destruction, not a very major step when all things were considered.

But one thing she kept a very wary eye on was how quickly humans were progressing.

It had been...a long time since Hagoromo had died, despite her best attempts Kurami just wasn't able to keep track of time effectively, it began to all blur together.

Humans had progressed scarily quickly, their bodies all changing and forming chakra coils of their own which they could use. Every single human she observed had them in some fashion, though there were many who had weak coils, interspersed with those who were simply born able to draw upon more chakra. It also seemed that use expanded these coils, as Areta had displayed quite aptly.

The little girl was all grown up now, and she had been Kurami's only real measuring bar for how long it had been. When Kurami had told her of what she could possibly be capable of, she grasped the opportunity with both hands, using her chakra in any way she could think of, which mostly consisted of flame-based abilities. But what really brought happiness to Kurami was that she also used it economically, to light fires and heat things. By using her chakra in that way, Areta was proof that chakra didn't have to be used offensively or defensively, it could also be used in a more normal sense.

Unfortunately, the greed of humans became apparent, as one of the warrior clans in the region managed to find out about what Areta was doing and promptly showed up to demand she join them. Kurami only found out what happened a few months later when she roamed back into the region, and some of the remaining inhabitants of the small village told her what had occurred. That prompted her current pissed-off stomp through the woods. She knew exactly where the warrior clan lived, and even if Areta was now dead, she was going to crush their shitty little compound for daring to fuck with her.

Idly she wondered whether she was about to do a bad thing, since there doubtlessly would be women and children in the compound, and even if she allowed them to evacuate, they would be defenceless in the middle of the forest, easy pickings for the rival clans. But, well, the leaders of the clan had made their decision, and she was not about to start getting into the habit of letting things slide.

Areta was probably the only living human that was dear to her, what with Indra having vanished and Asura, while definitely being a soft spot for her owing to who his father was, not really being someone she could honestly claim she cared for. No, Areta was definitely someone she cared about, and that this clan had decided to attack the village that she had grown equally fond of, probably ignoring warnings from the villagers that it was under her tentative protection, meant their lives were forfeit.

The villagers knew of her and that she liked Areta, it would be impossible to stop them from ever seeing, hearing, or in a single confusing case sensing her, so instead, she just let Areta tell them about her. They certainly would have made sure the clan knew they were fucked if they attacked the village, and maybe they thought it was a bold bluff, but that didn't matter. Denso was dead, Areta was taken despite burning a half-dozen of the attacking men to death, and many other villagers were wounded or killed. That was not something she could allow to stand. But, that didn't mean she couldn't also take care to not cause needless casualties.

And she could have some fun while she was at it.

Sorry about the delay and the shortness of chapters.

I've been stuck in a rut where I genuinely just can't bring myself to write more than a few paragraphs at a time before just not being able to continue, so I've been trying to work on a bunch of new pilot chapters and even old stories like Crimson Dovah and Ruby Rose, Engineer Extraordinaire, but I just apparently suck at writing right now. Probably doesn't help that I got AC4: Black Flag recently and have been burning my way across the Caribbean. I'll be trying still of course, but I have no idea when you can expect the next chapter, or what it will even be.

Maybe Trials of the Wylfen Corsair =D