The cloud cover beyond the windows set the Hokage office in a miserable grey, reflecting the somber moods of the ANBU team kneeling before Lord Third, heads down in reflection of their failure. They were dirty and tired, their uniforms ripped and weathered, their bodies aching and their stomachs empty.
The jinchuuriki made off with everything they had and they had no choice but to report back to Konoha, to update the Hokage personally on everything they learned about the runaway.
Now Lord Third sat in his chair, his pen forgotten on the desk, fingers interlocked as he cast a mournful glance over each of the ANBU. He released a breath, burdened and weighted with age, and cast his eyes to the sky.
"Naruto has fallen victim to a fault in the seal, then?"
"It appears so, Lord Hokage," Kakashi answered, level and calm behind his mask.
They were told to stand and they did. Tenzō stepped forward, holding within him more conviction than his teammates. "I was able to pacify the fox with my Wood Release upon initial contact. However, Naruto's control was lost again in the night and he fled."
"I see."
"Naruto was cooperating, Lord Hokage," Tenzō assured. They could all see how tired the Third looked, how burdened the news left him, and how he so desperately wanted for the jinchuuriki child to return. It was surreal, seeing firsthand just how much that boy meant to the head of their village. "He fully intended on returning with us to Konoha, I'm certain of that."
The Hokage closed his eyes, a tired smile in the lines of his face. "Thank you for your report. For now, rest up. I will discuss this matter with the advisors and have your new orders by morning. You are dismissed."
Wordlessly, they complied. Hokage Tower was left in their wake and they made their first return to ANBU Headquarters to finally peel away their worn and faded uniforms. The masks came off first, then the armour, until finally they were pulling on civilian clothing.
Two months ago, they set out with enough provisions for a three week mission to retrieve the missing jinchuuriki of the nine-tails. Nine weeks later and not only had they not retrieved their target but, to top it off, they also learned the grim truth that the fox was taking over the Uzumaki's body with frightening control. The biggest concern there was whether the seal had been broken or just loosened, or if it perhaps contained an oversight that allowed such things to slip through. But Minato was nothing if not meticulous about his seals. That man would not have used it without absolute certainty that it would hold.
So, where did that leave them?
Tenzō closed his locker and sat still on the benches for a while. He'd taken the whole thing the hardest. Kakashi understood, but was surprised to find his teammate so fixated on the matter. It wasn't like Tenzō.
"I hope we're chosen for the next phase," he murmured.
"I don't doubt that we will be," Itachi supplied as he gathered his hair and tied it back. "In all of ANBU, we have the best chance at completing this mission. If this is the fox at work, your Wood Release will be vital in securing Naruto safely."
Personally, Kakashi couldn't care one way or another. A mission was a mission. If he had to head back out for another two months of camping, so be it. But he would have been equally fine with washing his hands of the matter entirely. Those two, though? Well. Tenzō he may have understood, but it was surreal to find even Itachi taking it to heart.
Tenzō took relief in that assurance, smiling. "Right. I'll keep a closer watch on him next time. There might be a tell that signals when the fox takes control."
"Or," Kakashi mused, feeling eyes on him, "he's fooling the both of you."
They gave him a look, hard and unamused. He smiled.
"Just thinking out loud."
"Menma?"
Naruto made a face, pulling up the hood of his cloak as the hiss of rain drowned out the world around him. It was loud against his ears and clouded his thoughts. The wind picked up and he searched through the fogs of mist for better shelter than the sparse trees overhead, grimacing when he found the forest stretching far across the plains ahead. Oh, look, more trees.
He was so sick and tired of trees.
In an effort to distract himself, Naruto snorted and ducked through the brush. He wished he'd spent another night in town; the inn he stayed at last night was cozy and cheap, and it was right next to a ramen bar. It was no Ichiraku, but come on. Ramen. Right there, just a two minute walk away, day or night. He could have lived there and been perfectly content, were it not for the knowledge that if he stopped moving, it would only be a matter of time before ANBU would drag him out of whatever hiding place kicking and screaming.
"What kinda name is Menma?"
"The same kind as Naruto, evidently."
Fair point. Okay. Naruto could live with that. "That's what Mom wanted to call me?"
"Before your father picked Naruto out of his sensei's book," Kurama supplied.
The effect was instant and Naruto felt a sudden dislike for his name, knowing that it was a gift from his father more than his mother. He held a lot of feelings for dear old Dad, none of them good and most of them bitter.
Naruto found himself doing whatever he thought his father would disapprove of. Running away with Kurama and becoming a missing-nin (though Kurama reminded him that he couldn't be a missing-nin if he was never a nin in the first place) was likely one of those things, seeing as everything that Minato Namikaze did was 'for the village.' He made Naruto into a living weapon 'for the village.' He lived 'for the village.' He died 'for the village.' He took away any chance for Naruto to have a normal, happy life because Naruto was a sacrifice for the wellbeing of that Sage-damned village.
So, Naruto had a lot of feelings. None good.
It was easy to push away from a village that never accepted him. It was easy to leave when the one person who he connected with was dead. He had no problem stealing from ANBU sent to retrieve him, ANBU that looked at him like a bomb ready to go off. And though life was much harder now that he was making a living for himself without the funding and protection of the Hokage, he was managing by the skin of his teeth. All of those things were easy, but his name was his. It was something that he always had from the moment of his birth, a name given to him by his parents, an identity that stuck with him for good or bad.
He was Naruto Uzumaki.
But Naruto was his father's choice, Kurama said. Menma was his mother's.
But he wasn't about to stop being Naruto Uzumaki just because he took issue with his father.
The rain fell heavier, beating against his over-sensitive hearing like a drum. His clothes were sopping wet, slick against his skin in an obvious and unpleasant show of just how bad things were getting. The weather took a turn from light showers to rolling thunderstorms in less than twenty minutes and now Naruto was all sorts of miserable and wanted to be anywhere but there. He should have stayed in town. He was en route to a small village along the edges of Fire Country, but with the rain and misery surrounding him there was no telling how—
"Switch with me."
Naruto narrowed his eyes, but before he could protest, he found himself pushed back, deep beneath the surface, observing through his own eyes but not really there.
Naruto was gone. Kurama was there, and Kurama was not happy. He leapt into the air and dove into the bushes just in time to avoid the shower of shuriken through the mist. Then there was running— so much running, and Kurama was angry and Naruto was confused and everything was grey and miserable and all either of them wanted was a roof and a bed.
With a quick hand sign, Kurama left a shadow clone behind and used it as a distraction to get as far away from their attackers as possible. Then, once distance was made, he sent another clone off in another direction to mark their scent, create confusion. It was their default reaction, one with a high success rate.
But Kurama wasn't one to run from a fight where avoidable. Usually, it was Naruto doing the running—because Kurama rather risk the blow to their pride than the capture of his still-training jinchuuriki. If he was running, it could only mean one thing.
Those three were back, huh? Their three weeks of peace were finally up.
Kurama grinned, his back pressed flush against the rocky mountainside, eyes darting through the shadows of the mist. He was a clone, there to ward away three monsters before they could pose a problem for his little jinchuuriki. There was no doubt in his mind that they would see through him the moment that he let down his guard, that they would recognize him for the distraction that he was, but it wouldn't matter so long as he bought his real self time to put some distance between them.
The last thing he needed was to get caught by that cursed wood user. If ever there came a day where the kid allowed him to kill, that man would be the first one on the business end of his claws. Every time he looked into those dead eyes, all he saw was that damned tree-nymph Hashirama all over again.
Kurama was not bitter. Kurama just knew when to hold grudges, which was always.
Through the blanketed mists, his sharp eyes could make out the faint outlines of silhouettes. The ANBU were there, making their move, no longer relegated to the safety of shadows. He didn't know whether to be amused or concerned; no doubt they were tired of the chase.
The dull-grey mists parted beneath the red glow of the sharingan and Kurama took practiced effort to not make eye contact, not that a genjutsu would hold him for long, or that the Uchiha's control was anything to worry about for a clone. Being dispelled might be annoying, though.
Wooden stocks split the ground at his feet and he took to the air, falling through the winds and rain as they stretched up after him. He deftly avoided their restraint and from so high up, he could make out Tenzō's form. Kurama vowed to make that man his personal scratching post when the day came.
The moment he landed, kunai shot forth, embedding themselves in the rock behind him. His head snapped to them, eyes catching on the paper tags still catching the wind—
Explosions lit up the mists in brilliant orange and white and plumes of smoke billowed up from the mountainside and Kurama was fine. No clone of his would dispel from as weak a blast as that. (He may have shunshined out of the way with a very angry snarl just before they went off.)
Now he was hiding. Kurama did not like hiding. He was a tailed beast, the physical embodiment of the world's hatred and proud, and in his true form, he did not hide.
But this was for Naruto, and damn it all, if he hadn't gotten so fond of the boy, he'd have never been in this mess to start.
Kurama closed his eyes and listened. Naruto had his senses, sure, but Naruto had no real clue how to control them. They would cover that in their lessons at some point. For now, he closed his eyes, spreading his sense throughout the forest, blocking out the muddy hiss of rain and storm.
Nothing.
Damn the ANBU and damn their hand signals.
With a muted snarl, Kurama slipped a hand into his pouch and pulled out a kunai. They had better weapons, sure. But Kurama never used weapons. He never needed to; he had claws and more chakra than any of those peons that deluded themselves into thinking they stood a fighting chance against him.
There it was—a rustle in the leaves, so slight and so silent that to the ANBU themselves, it would go unheard. To his right. They knew where he was. He knew where they were. Now it was a battle of patience, to see who would make the first move. If they used that bloody wood release again so help them—
The rain pooled together through the fog, twisted and hissed and towered over him in a giant serpentine body. He gaped, eyes wide, and damn it all Minato's student could use water style.
"Mother fuck—"
A wave crashed over him like a force of nature and he vanished in a drowned-out smoke.
The second shadow clone was well into the mountains bordering Fire and Wind when the ground shook beneath his feet. Against his better judgement, he looked back, seeing the literal sea of trees left in the wake of that damned scarecrow's water dragon. Water style in rain like that was a death sentence, especially when the seal was holding him back from properly using his own power. Naruto, the damned fool, had better access to his chakra than Kurama did at the moment. Naruto had access, but little skill. For all that Kurama was training the boy, it was a task and a half mentoring from within his student's body. Naruto didn't make it easy, either; he needed things explained to him thrice over before anything stuck.
Out of the trio of monsters hunting them down, he expected Kakashi to be the least troublesome. He remembered the boy from the time of Kushina as his jinchuuriki; Kakashi was Minato's student, his right-hand man, a quiet and cold-blooded ANBU of the Leaf. That boy was a prodigy, sure. But he wasn't a user of wood release. His sharingan was not his own. The two things that Kurama feared most in the world were not much of a threat in that man, because, for all that one eye was of Uchiha blood, it was nowhere near as dangerous as the real Uchiha in their group. Kurama hadn't thought much of him.
He'd forgotten the Copy-Nin epithet that haunted the hidden villages, the reminder of the vast arsenal of ninjutsu under Kakashi's belt granted to him by that very same cursed eye that plagued the last twelve years of Kurama's cursed existence.
Kurama growled low in his throat and made a hand seal. Two more clones poofed into existence before him and they all exchanged glances.
"Scatter," he bit out, looking every bit as feral as he felt. "Let's separate them."
The clones nodded and then they were gone, and he hoped for all their sakes that the real Kurama was making some damn-good distance with his shunshin. The biggest concern was how dispersed their chakra was.
He wished he could call upon his masked beasts. The seal would never allow him enough chakra to do that, though.
Kurama looked down at his hands, so small and insignificant and human with their dull claws and feeble strength. A human child, of all things. Oh, how he cursed his fate. How simple a task this would have been if he were the towering physical manifestation of chakra that he once was. With one mighty swipe of his tail, Kurama would level mountains and forests and break every bone in their bodies. But Kurama was not a forty-foot tall fox right now. He was a twelve-year-old human. His yin and yang halves were separated. And he would just have to cope.
He sensed the flicker of negative emotions before he did the trail of suppressed chakra rising up the mountain and he stood there, waiting with narrowed eyes as the masked ANBU arrived in a swirl of rain and wind and autumn leaves.
Kakashi. Hound. He drew the short straw.
Well, at least it wasn't the wood nymph.
Actually, every straw was the short straw.
Kurama rolled his shoulders and flexed his non-existent claws, Kakashi's eye boring dully into his own, and he grinned. "Finally caught up, I see." He hated how young his voice sounded. Even injecting confidence into his tone was not enough to make him sound intimidating. Damn Naruto's age and damn his non-threatening appearance.
Kakashi's hand came up and he hated himself for flinching. The ANBU mask came off, revealing behind it an uncovered sharingan eye—
Shit.
Kakashi smiled behind the cloth covering half of his face in the most patronizingly aggravating way and damn it all to the Sage Kurama had met his gaze.
He couldn't move. When he tried to dispel himself and return to his original, nothing happened. He couldn't.
Genjutsu. And he couldn't dispel it. What a frightening thing for that filthy mutt to have picked up.
"You seem upset," Kakashi stated easily, approaching with leisure. "Maa, I just want to talk."
Just talk, huh? He already knew that Kurama was a clone. Talking was about all a clone was good for, not that he'd get any information that way.
The ANBU shoved a hand into his pocket, stopping directly before Kurama, looking down on him with empty eyes. "I can see that you're not Naruto," he observed. "You've taken full control."
"And what if I have?" He found his voice. So he could still talk, then, still give information.
"Maa, I don't want to waste much time on copies. I'll assume the ones my teammates are after are shadow clones as well," Kakashi stated simply, shifting his weight, looking so utterly calm that Kurama just wanted to tear out his throat. "Naruto Uzumaki is cooperating with you, isn't he?"
Kurama narrowed his eyes.
Kakashi smiled again and it was the most achingly bitter thing Kurama had seen in all of Naruto's twelve years. "I thought as much. What happened at the inn was too convenient to have been staged without Naruto's assistance."
Kurama bared his teeth in a snarl and tried dispelling again. He felt his chakra flicker and die out and cursed.
The ANBU tilted his head and his eyes went up to the hitai-ate brandished clearly on Kurama's forehead, narrowing slightly. But he didn't look surprised, just resigned.
"The jinchuuriki is a missing-nin," he said. "This poses a problem."
They knew. Or at the very least, this one knew. That meant that they couldn't risk being caught under any circumstances.
Naruto was no longer safe if something went wrong.
"The boy has nothing to do with this," Kurama stated, his voice evenly masking his rage. Maybe it was a foolish attempt, but it was worth a shot. "Believe what you want, Copy-Nin. It doesn't matter. You won't catch me."
"We'll just have to see, won't we?"
Kurama snorted. "You're a thousand years too early to be challenging me, kit."
A stray kunai shot out from the rocks above and stuck in his chest. He looked up, grinning, finding one of the other shadow clones staring down at him with a blank stare, and disappeared into smoke.
Kurama was very much too old for this shit.
'Naruto' was a name that would soon be presenting them issues. At the inn, he signed in under the name 'Menma' and now Naruto was bitter and sulking, taking his control back in the safety of the room they'd paid for, sitting on all fours atop the bed and glaring hard into the mirror.
"We're using that name for now, kit," Kurama stated, leaving no room for argument. "They'll find us here soon enough."
Naruto's glare wavered. He wanted to show Kurama how unamused he was at the blatant disregard for his real name, but at the end of the day, he knew why Kurama did it. To protect him. No doubt the ANBU team would be looking for him in the nearest village. No doubt they'd be asking around at the inns for a boy fitting his description, going by the name Naruto Uzumaki. And they would find him. Then they'd take him back to the Leaf. Or something.
"Then let's just keep moving," he grumbled, even though that was very much not the thing that he wanted to do. The rain hadn't let up yet, the downpour completely destroying their visibility, and they'd be as good as dead fighting like that. He'd just finally gotten out of his sopping wet clothes and into warm and comfortable ones, burrowing beneath a blanket to fight off the chill of the oncoming winter. He finally just dried his hair and ate dinner and damn it, he wanted sleep. Between all of the clones, all of the genjutsu dispels and shunshin he'd had to do over the past six hours, he was feeling his exhaustion.
"You need to rest," Kurama said. There was significantly less bite to his voice than usual, as though he were calm, or… tired. Could tailed beasts get tired? "You'll be no good to us tired."
"Yeah, yeah," he muttered, hugging one of the pillows to his chest. It smelled like cheap soap and perfume and he wrinkled his nose, tossing it aside. The scent was giving him a headache. "You think they'll find us?"
"Hound might."
Naruto swallowed. "Yeah? Him? Isn't it Tenzō we gotta worry about?"
Kurama snorted. "I overlooked his skills because the other two are my weaknesses. But he is by far the best tracker Konoha has. I remember him from Kushina's time."
"Right. He knew Mom." Naruto breathed, fisting the blankets nestled around him with a shaky strength. "He knew both of them. Mom and Dad. So… why?"
"Why what, kit?"
"Why don't I know him at all?"
Kurama didn't answer—didn't need to. Naruto knew why. Kurama was why. Dad sealing the tailed beast inside of him was why. As he sat there, he wondered just how many people from his parents' lives disregarded him the moment that they died.
Kurama told him stories of Hound before, not long after they made off with all of the ANBU's things; he said that Hound had been around Kushina a lot during pregnancy as a guard, that he was an important shinobi to the Fourth Hokage. He had skills and respect, but he was also more than that.
Naruto let out a loud, exasperated groan and threw himself back on the mattress, his arms and legs flailing his frustrations. "Damn it all! This whole thing is pissin' me off!" He hissed and glared at the ceiling. "Why can't they just leave us alone?"
"You're a jinchuuriki. Konoha's only one. The village won't let you go."
"Shut up. I know that already…"
"Then don't ask stupid questions, brat."
Naruto rolled his eyes. He had words for that but held his tongue. "What should we do, then? They're gonna catch our clones eventually. They've caught, what, four now? Shit. Five."
"They're close."
"I know that, Furball. Lemme think."
"Don't think; it's painful to watch."
Naruto narrowed his eyes and frowned. "You're a real pain, y'know?"
"We leave Fire Country."
The annoyance fell away and he blinked. "Huh?"
"We're close enough to Wind to cross the border," Kurama explained, and it was true. Even if Naruto wasn't liking where this was headed. Fire Country was the last thing he held onto after leaving Konoha. "From there, we can make a more long-term plan of travel. At the very least, they will be out of their element."
Naruto bit his lip. "Yeah, but…"
"Naruto."
"I know, I know."
It would have happened sooner or later, he knew. He just wished 'later' was 'much later' and that they could continue aimlessly travelling Fire for just a little longer. It felt like it was the last piece of his history left to cling to, the last remnants of the life that he used to live. And he didn't know the first thing about Wind.
But Kurama would be there with him. He wouldn't be going in alone.
Another shadow clone dispelled and new memories flooded his head. He could see Tenzō's face clear as day in his mind, looking every bit determined as wooden pillars pierced the clone, and Naruto sighed. Tenzō's frustration felt so much more sincere than Hound's. He was starting to hate that man.
Wind Country, huh?
Naruto twisted around to look into the mirror again, his own face staring back. "Kurama?"
"What is it, kit?"
He shook away his insecurities and grinned. "I wanna train more. Teach me some super cool super awesome jutsu, 'kay? I'm gonna beat all their asses."
Kurama laughed, and he relished it.
"You'll do more than that, brat. You'll take on the world."
Notes:
I know a few people were waiting for this... Just a heads up that there will be a delay in getting the next chapter up! Thank you for all of the kind words 3