Naruto is starting to understand that the Uzumaki were a lot more than just Uzushio's largest clan.
They were the first clan, the founding clan of Uzushio, the ones that first settled on this island and started constructing the city that now lies ruined over his head. They were also considered the primary protectors inside the village; they handled internal disputes between the ninja population, were responsible for seeking out chakra talent among civilian families, and one of their primary duties was to protect Uzushio's civilian population in times of war. In truth the Uzumaki weren't that much bigger than the rest of Uzushio's clans– most of the space in the Uzumaki section of the repository that made it seem so much larger is actually reserved for the contributions of ninja with no clan to call their own– those born either from civilian families or from shinobi ones not large enough to be considered clans by themselves.
The walls are lined with alcoves filled with jutsu scrolls and books and artistic diagrams, all under dozens of names engraved into the stone banners above them. The actual Uzumaki portion of the room is in the center towards the back, a circle of shelves filled with jutsu and odd artifacts.
Naruto ignores all of it in favor of the slanted mahogany shelves filled with tomes on sealing theory.
Within moments the floor of the repository is a disaster; open books lie scattered in a haphazard circle around him, long rolls of dark paper containing sealing diagrams in bright ink overlap each other on the stone floor as Naruto scours through their contents.
Like before, the collective knowledge of Uzushio remains out of reach until the moment he needs it, hidden right up until he comes across a symbol he doesn't know or a term that doesn't immediately make sense. Knowledge floods him in those moments and he begins to understand the different lines and symbols, how they're used to direct and transform energy within a seal. He begins to understand the laws that govern different types of seals, their limits and the purpose of their designs, until he can look at a seal he's never seen before and understand at a glance what it might be for, how it might work when chakra is added or subtracted or changed.
At the center of his chaotic circle, the scroll that holds the copy of Kurama's seal lies unfurled.
Below it, just past Naruto's crossed legs, a new one is forming.
The central construction of the seal has remained the same. Even if Naruto knew how to remove the seal– which he doesn't, he's come to understand that doing so would be a pretty terrible idea– one that would likely get him killed. The inner part of the seal is responsible for creating a dimensional space– a sort of pocket within the life force of a person in which a second life force is sealed. The intermediate portion of the seal is responsible for keeping the two life forces separate from one another. The outer portion of the seal is responsible for enforcing one life force over the other, in a sense closing the dimensional pocket and keeping the imprisoned life force sealed inside. Naruto's seal is somewhat altered from the original– the intermediate portion of his seal, which deals with the negative space between the inner swirling part and the jagged outer part, is too wide to properly keep Kurama's energy separate from his own. There's also a small portion of it missing– a kind of barrier that might have prevented certain parts of Kurama's energy from moving through the seal at all. But those filters are gone from Naruto's seal, which is good, because otherwise he would have had to try and remove them in order to manage altering the seal the way he needs to.
Now all Naruto really needs to do is add.
The eight pyramids of scripture that ring the seal and make up it's outer portion are responsible for the gate construct– the part of the seal that divides Naruto's half of the seal space from Kurama's. If Naruto adds a counterbalance, a seal segment of the same design and potency but with an opposite spin, he can turn the two parts of the seal into a shared space, one where both his energy and Kurama's can exist without one holding precedence over the other. After that it's only a matter of altering the seal's law to allow chakra to be moved back and forth instead of just one way.
…Which is a lot more complicated than it sounds.
In order to manage it, Naruto needs to create a set of seal extensions known as Lines of Transgression. The Lines themselves are pretty straightforward, but have a great deal of rules and additions in order to get them to work.
So far, Naruto has it broken down into four stages.
After the addition of the counterbalance he needs to create a series of sixteen 'bridges' to cross the seal's intermediate space, connecting the inner portion of the seal to the outer portion. They'd appear as little more than short lines crossing the seal's negative space, but they would allow Naruto to connect his own energy directly to the seal space, and thus Kurama.
Second he would need to place 'tapping points' along the primary pathways of his chakra. They would serve as guides and anchors for the Lines, allowing them to move and draw energy and chakra from along the whole of his body. They'd be placed by a series of symbols that would brace the spaces where the Lines would appear. They'd be the most intricate part of the seal addition, and the most important, as the locations of the anchors would dictate where and how the Lines would move chakra. They would number in the hundreds, starting on either side of his neck and moving down along his arms to the backs of his hands, branching to move along the curves of his ribcage and down the planes of his back, tracing down his legs to the tops of his feet.
The third part would be the Lines themselves, which would, by far, take the most energy to place. He'd need to go slow, starting at the most far reaching of the anchors, the ones on his neck, wrists, and ankles, and then slowly add equal amounts of chakra to all five points until the Lines filled out the skeleton set by the tapping points.
The final part would be the bracers, circular seals that would lock the Lines in place and cause the tapping points and Line edges to merge, activating the movement of chakra through the central seal.
By the time he's worked out all the kinks in his additions, drawn out all the minutest of details, he's been working nearly a full day and hadn't even noticed but for a stiffness in his legs and the painful rumble of hunger making itself known from a stomach too long ignored.
So he pulls out his container of Iruka-sensei's curry and goes over his diagrams one last time. He needs some materials still, some ink and a transfer map, but the hardest part is done.
Iruka-sensei's curry does a lot to help get his energy back up, and eating gives his brain a welcome break from all the work and helps relieve some of the headache from staring at ink on a page all day. It also makes him a little homesick.
Even though it's only been a few days, he misses Iruka-sensei and Jiji and his bed and Konoha in general. But more than anything he misses Kurama, misses his constant presence and his rumbling laugh and his rough-around-the-edges affection.
So he finishes his curry, takes another deep, fortifying breath, and goes in search of the last few items he needs.
He finds the transfer map in a stack of paper rolls that when unfurled are longer than he is tall. They're thick, almost like they're made of canvas, and each one holds the outline of a person, each side bearing the front and back respectively. He mostly needs it because he's on his own– there's no one around to help him place the tapping runes on the places he can't see or reach with an ink brush, like his back for instance. It allows him to place the runes where they need to be on the map, and then use chakra to transfer those runes to the correct places on himself. Some of the maps already have diagrams drawn on them, so he searches through the stack until he finds a blank one.
The only other thing he needs is ink– he doesn't have enough in his bag to properly detail the whole map. Something tells him he won't find any in here though, so he wanders back out into the main chamber of the repository.
He does a quick turn, his eyes scanning the clan symbols above the doors until they catch on one in particular, the symbol of a tapered droplet pieced by crossed senbon.
Clan Sumiran. His mind tells him.
As he ducks inside their section of the repository, he finds himself unsure of what exactly he's looking at. There are shelves of scrolls and books, which he expected to see, but there are also shelves filled with row upon row of strange glass bottles, all filled with odd assortments of dark powders and bright liquids. He plucks one of the smaller bottles off the top of the shelf to examine. The smaller bottles, each about the size of a canteen, are the ones filled with liquids, ranging in colour from molten gold to luminescent cobalt. The one he's holding is glistening amber, and when he tips it forward he sees a containment seal carved in the cork stopper. The yellowing label reads:
Entropic Tree Sap
Class 4B Reactant
All the small bottles have the same word written at the top of their descriptions. Catalyst.
The jars of powders that line the floor and lower shelves are larger, almost half his height, and though all the powders are the same charcoal black, each one reflects differently under the flickering firelight, shining around the edges in greens and purples. All the labels read Ink: Unmixed.
The largest container stands just to the side of the shelves of bottles, a huge glass amphora that nearly comes up to Naruto's shoulders. It's filled to the brim with some kind of clear liquid that shines silvery despite the warm light. The label on it reads Organic base: Pure.
All this for ink? He wonders, stepping around the shelves until he almost trips over a stack of ink stones of varying sizes, some the same size as the one Jiji uses to sign documents, some bigger than Naruto's head.
As confused as he is he doesn't have time to look around too much– he just needs regular old ink to set the transfer map, but with all these bottles and mixtures he's not even sure where to look.
Eventually he finds a container of ink powder that doesn't seem to reflect any strange light– in fact it doesn't seem to reflect any light at all– and drags it from the shelf. Foreign muscle memory takes over from there, knowledge that he doesn't so much think as feel.
He lifts one of the larger ink stones from the stacks, finds a stirring rod tucked in a stack protected with silk cloth. It like he's doing this for the hundredth time instead of the first as he mixes the base with the powdered ink until the consistency is right and there are no lumps or pockets of air.
When he's finishes he brings the ink stone back into the Uzumaki portion of the repository, careful not to slosh any, and gets out his brushes.
Preparation takes another hour, if only because Naruto double and triple checks literally everything. Any misstep or tiny rune out of line and things can go very differently than he needs them to, and since Naruto doesn't have the key necessary to lift parts of the seal, any alterations he makes now will be permanent. He can't make any mistakes. Kurama's life is on the line.
So Naruto, the dead last, the failure, has to do this one thing completely perfect.
He should be terrified of screwing up.
But he finds the only thing he's scared for is Kurama, wasting away if he does nothing about it. Well this is him doing something about it, and he can't be scared, he has to be sure, because if he thinks about the what-ifs and the maybes he freezes up, and he can't afford to. Not even for a second.
He has the first part down.
The counterbalance had been pretty easy, just a matter of inverting and copying a piece of his own seal and placing it against the outer part. The bridges had required some more delicate maneuvering, but he has them done too, sixteen short lines across the gap in his seal.
Now the hard part.
The transfer map sits in front of him, detailed with all the tiny symbols that will form the tapping points. He'd trashed six of them before he'd gotten it perfect, every little circle, curve and curl in their proper place.
Well, now or never.
He places his hands on the edge of the canvas and channels his central chakra, Yang and Yin, to the surface of his fingers.
A low hum fills the air as chakra flows along the contours of the map, alighting each of the symbols in turn. The runes come to life and begin to flow off the paper, drawing towards his fingertips like a line of ants towards sugar. They crawl across his hands, winding up his arms to tuck beneath his sleeveless shirt. He feels them move across his skin like the flutter of hummingbird wings, soft and vibrating with energy as they settle into their places. After a moment they still, and then two by two release concentrated bursts of chakra that feel like needle punctures, burrowing into the main lines of his chakra vessels. When the pain subsides into a steady thrum of energy Naruto crosses his legs across the floor and goes still, folding his fingers in his lap and concentrating.
Energy, soft and seeking, pulses along his limbs and down the line of his throat, steady bursts of chakra along the spaces created between the anchors. Lines, solid black and two finger widths wide, grow between the anchors with every chakra pulse, painting across his skin until they converge at the center of his abdomen, merging there to circle the central seal.
As soon as they converge Naruto makes a series of hand seals– Snake for movement, Tiger for force, Ox for stability, and Dragon for balance– and dips his hand in the ink stone. He touches two fingers to the top of his throat and feels the bracer lock in a band of black around the tops of the Lines there. He goes through the hands signs and repeats the process for his wrists and his ankles, feeling the power of the bracers locking the Lines of Transgression and the anchors together, merging the whole apparatus into one final seal segment.
Sweat breaks out over Naruto's skin like a broken fever, causing his skin to prickle with goose bumps as the change settles into his chakra systems. He waits as long as he can stand, just until the new changes seem stable, and then he dives back into his head in search of his friend.
The process is different; it feels less like falling now and more like taking a step back, like the little world is closer to the surface than before.
The black bars that separated the seal space are gone. The relief Naruto feels is so overwhelming that he needs a minute to catch his breath.
Other than that the space is much the same as when he last saw it, with the soft grassy hillock in the center of the water, surrounded by blooming blue water lotus, his bijuu lying across it.
Even from inside Naruto can feel his chakra now, humming all around the space, ready for him to draw on it when he chooses to. He has no idea how long it will take– Naruto's resting chakra isn't nearly enough to replenish what Kurama lost, not all at once, but he'll keep giving for as long as it takes.
He makes himself comfortable in the water just shy of the earth mound and begins to pull his chakra into the seal space. He's going to be here a while.
The first thing Kurama becomes aware of, after so much time dreaming of nothing but black, is a sensation he can't ever recall having felt before.
There are very few things that he can claim never to have felt. Until recently protective had been one, the desire to guard something from the things that might harm it. His siblings had never needed protecting, and until a few years ago there was nothing he cared about enough to try and protect. This is something else though; strength flowing into him from some outside source, a familiar source, but Kurama can't put a finger on why it's familiar.
If he didn't know better he'd say it was chakra, which is ridiculous. Kurama is a tailed beast. Even with only half of his energy Kurama has as much latent chakra as Shukaku on a good day. He has never needed more of it.
But then he remembers.
He remembers his insides rebelling against him, remembers forcing it down so his kit wouldn't see, which only made it worse because it was his fault, his mistake and his hate that made him hurt, and the more he grows to care the more unbearable that becomes, and the more he begins to feel the one thing he swore he never would. Regret.
Kurama regrets the deaths of Minato Namikaze and Kushina Uzumaki.
Not because he cared for them in any fashion, but because their deaths meant that his kit never had a family, never had a home, never had people to teach and guide him and care for him the way he deserved to be cared for.
He may not have liked Kushina, Minato even less so, but he knows they would have loved his kit more than anything because how could they not?
He's not sure why he's coming back to consciousness now, with how much chakra he threw up he wouldn't be surprised if he was in hibernation for years, if he ever woke up at all.
But now his senses are becoming clearer and yes, that is chakra he can feel, trickling through him slowly but surely. Not just any chakra but his kit's chakra.
Which Kurama is pretty sure is very solidly impossible.
He blinks his eyes open, which takes more effort than it should, making his chakric gaze focus.
The air feels different, warmer and more open. Kurama is so accustomed to stagnation that the soft movement of wind around him startles him, almost as much as the distinct smell of greenery in air that should only smell of water and iron.
When his eyes adjust to the light the first thing he sees is his kit, sitting in the water just shy of the bed of earth he's curled on, which he can't remember having been there before. For one heartrending moment Kurama is reminded of the Sage of Six Paths, meditating on the jagged rocks at the old nexus of the world. The little blond brat is sitting there, hands clasped and eyes closed, sealing lines running down his body that Kurama knows weren't there before.
There is no gate. The cage bars aren't open, or unsealed, or left ajar– they are gone entirely.
The brat looks tired, looks older, and Kurama wonders whether he's not still dreaming, maybe truly dead, even.
~Fishcake?~ He asks, to be sure that this isn't something he's imagining.
The brat's eyes fly open and fix on him, wild blue irises red rimmed and exhausted. He blinks for a second, astonished, and then those eyes start to look dangerously wet. The first thing that crosses Kurama's mind is oh shit not the waterworks, and then the kit is on his feet with record speed and comes crashing into Kurama's snout with all the force of a tiny hurricane. He curls an arm around the kit on collision to keep him secure, but it turns out the brat doesn't need the support– he's stronger than he was, more solid, and how the hell did that happen?
~Easy Kit. What's going on?~ he says tiredly, looking around at the strange new place he finds himself in, no longer anything like the prison he remembers. He leans back, takes in the new lines running up and down the brats arms and neck and the change in chakra around him, and changes his question. ~What did you do?~
Naruto smiles wide and rubs the back of his head in that little nervous tick of his. His eyes are still wet. "It's kind of a long story."
Kurama extends a claw to brush the tears out of his kit's eyes, not liking them there. ~Start from the beginning then.~
Naruto takes a deep breath and does.
By the end of the tale, surprised is the least of what Kurama feels. He'd known his Kit was something else, known he was capable of things that most other shinobi would never be capable of, but this? If Kurama weren't able to see the truth in every sentence out of the brat's mouth as he rambles on about storms and spirits and collecting bones, he wouldn't believe a word of it.
But then again, this brat has always had a talent for surprising him.
~Okay let me get this straight, kid.~ Kurama interrupts as Naruto's reaching the tail end of his explanation. ~You broke into the Anbu section of the Konoha Archives without getting caught, ran to Uzushio on foot in a monsoon, gained the allegiance of the island by burning the dead, opened the Uzushio repository by yourself, and reformed a class S seal without any help whatsoever.~
The brat has the nerve to blink at him, like it doesn't make sense when he says it all at once like that, and then shrugs. "I guess."
Kurama narrows his eyes. ~You guess?~
And before Naruto can so much as come up with an answer Kurama scoops the little brat in up a tumble, eliciting a shriek as Kurama rolls through the water with him, kicking up leaves and grass and lotus petals.
~What the hell you little pipsqueak! You go through hell and back and the only thing you have to say about it is I Guess? You've never been more than a mile outside the village limits in the whole decade you've been alive!~
The kit laughs and wriggles loose enough to thump Kurama on the neck. "You scared the crap out of me, asshole!" Naruto grumbles. "And I missed your stupid grumpy demon butt, sue me."
And when Kurama looks down at this kid, this brat, smiling bright and still scrubbing tears from his ten-year-old face, all Kurama can think is treasure.
Maybe this is it. He wonders. All that talk of Kushina's about love and family. Maybe this is what it feels like.~
If it is, he understands now why she was willing to fight for it. To die for it. To raze the world to the ground for it.
It's the least of what Kurama would do. That's for damned sure.