Naruto Crossover Blue Exorcist chapter 2
Hello, and welcome to chapter 2! I am alive! As in not dead! Sorry for the wait, it took me time to construct a reasonnable explanation for Naruko's past. Thank you all for the reviews, and the faves! I love you guys!
After the meeting with the Headmaster, Naruko had found her dorm room, and had started settling in. The room itself was cosy, and welcoming: warm wood floor, cream walls, and a couple of oak furniture, which included a desk, shelves and a wardrobe, decorated the little alcove. A bed was tucked in a corner, opposite to a medium sized window that was currently open, letting a refreshing breeze in.
After unpacking her belongings, Naruko sat on her bed, and started going through her last bag- the one that held all her souvenirs and mementos. She had bought a few small albums since the creation of photography, but most of those mementos were tresses of hair, bracelets, engravings of people and wild natural scenery, and colourful trinkets that were of no particular value to anyone except her. Naruko paused when she reached her oldest souvenir of all: a tattered band of cloth that was once black, adorned with a shiny, well cared-for metal plate etched with a stylised leaf.
This was her most precious keepsake of all, and the only one that had survived the wearing away of time. It had been five hundred years, but her nightmarish memories of her life as a shinobi were ever so vivid.
Five hundred years ago, Tobi, or as he was revealed to be, Obito had finally raised the Juubi from the dead, and had set upon the task of casting the Eternal Tsukuyomi on the Moon. All was set to make his dream world into reality: Killer Bee was trapped in the Kamui dimension and Kakashi and Gai were dead, leaving a tired Naruko to fight against Obito alone. Naruko could still see Obito's insane grin and hear his demented laugh, as the madman practically tasted victory. But, Murphy's Law applied to everyone, even arch-villains, it seemed.
What Obito hadn't taken into account was that the Juubi was a force of nature. Nature was wild, ferocious and fierce, but most of all, possibly the most powerful force in existence. There was a reason why Sages, who could use natural chakra, were so strong. Also, what hadn't crossed the Uchiha's mind was that Juubi was, by all means, a baby demon, newly created from the remains of an old one but lacking the maturity. And that being relegated to a small part of your mind, as you watched your body act against your will was a terrorizing experience, as Kyuubi could attest to, many years ago, on a chilly October night.
So when Obito, intoxicated with power, gave that infinitesimal leeway to the Juubi to better marvel at how close he was to seeing his one true love again, it broke free and lashed out in complete and utter fear. Obito barely even felt it when he was obliterated into atoms by the mountain sized Juubi.
The Ten-Tailed demon then started what Naruko later called, the Genocide- the systematic erasing of everything that resembled Obito in the Juubi's eye. Or in simpler terms, the humans with chakra.
The auxiliary shinobis that stood on the sidelines were promptly annihilated, and suddenly the Juubi zeroed its gelatinous eye straight into her own eyes, but without actually staring at Naruko. It was actually looking at the general area in which Naruko stood.
A few tense seconds that felt like eternity passed, and the Juubi straightened. Naruko tensed, ready to dodge whatever the Juubi was going to throw her way. But the Juubi merely shook itself and jumped away. That was the last thing Naruko saw, because the shockwave produced by the Juubi's powerful jump caused the nearby mountain to rumble ominously. Seconds later, a whole pan of the mountain crumbled into a flash avalanche that swallowed Naruko Uzumaki.
Meanwhile, the Juubi wasted no time, and went straight to the biggest conglomeration of what it considered to be a menace to its safety.
In this case, Suna. Fortunately, the demon was slow, and not very agile; it was still discovering its own body, and thus, moved slowly, stumbling every few leaps it made, like a very big and ugly toddler. Occasionally though, it made leaps that covered a least several kilometres in one go, like it was slowly learning how to move.
Consequently, it left time for messengers to relay the news to Suna that the Juubi was heading their way, and so the village prepared. Civilians were evacuated. Suna shinobi were ordered to return to the village immediately, and medical ninjas worked overtime to heal every wounded so that they had as much capable fighters as they could. A few shinobi from the Alliance came with them as allies, but not a lot for the Shinobi Alliance had been greatly reduced by the Zetsu Clones, and the Juubi.
The whole of what was left of the shinobi army of Suna, led by Gaara, had been there, ready and geared. The Suna ninjas fought bravely for an entire day against the incarnation of Nature, but lost. The Juubi razed the Village, the relatively small wounds inflicted upon him by the ninjas already fading into scars before disappearing entirely.
Shortly after Suna's destruction, the Juubi began crawling towards the Land of Rivers, and its residential Village: the Village Hidden in the Valleys, or Tanigakure. It was also destroyed in the course of a day. And so, the Juubi began the systematic destruction of each and every Village there was.
The counterattack took time to coalesce. Three Kages had died, leaving many shinobis without a leader. Civil wars reigned in those villages where men fought to gain vacant positions of power. Many more deserted, terrified out of their wits by the looming threat of an unstoppable demon. The residential Hunter-nins made short work of those deserters, and made them into examples by displaying their dead bodies in the Village Squares. Needless to say, no shinobi left the Villages after that- the message was loud and clear: zero tolerance for deserters.
Civilians everywhere didn't have a much better life. Famine plagued them because the agricultural fields had been destroyed. No man was fool enough to venture out of the Village lest bandits attacked them. What little food remained was given out in rations. The economy, which relied mostly on the ninjas, crashed. Ryo bills became nothing more than kindling for fire. House prices rose to never-before-seen heights, because the viable homes were so few.
Added to that, the news of the defeat of Suna had swept through the villages, spreading unrest and fear through the hearts of even the most level-headed. One of the Big Five had fallen. And if that wasn't enough, Naruko Uzumaki, Hero of the War, was missing. Pessimists and cynics whispered that she had died, or worse, that she had abandoned them, to whomever would lend an ear to their hissing tongues.
Depression, fear of the Juubi and the ninja, who didn't seem so friendly after the Fleeing Massacres, suspicion and conflicts, bloomed in every heart, like so many parasites.
Finally, a conference was hastily organized to make an alliance, survival taking the step before mindless terror. The New Shinobi Alliance, which encompassed every Village there was, was born, making it the first good news since the battle of the Ten-Tails.
The New Shinobi Alliance started to get to work quickly. Shelters were created. The Villages were fortified. The coalition made all the inapt civilians evacuate in the shelters built in the entire Continent.
The NSA installed draconian measures to insure the survival of everyone they could. All the children were summed to become shinobis, even the nearly inept ones. They needed an army, and if it was to be composed of children, then so be it. Every able civilian was urged to learn a bit of taijutsu, unlock their chakra core, learn how to farm, how to hunt, basic first-aid and how to build viable houses. Everyone was urged to produce as many offspring as they could. Desperate times called for desperate measures.
However, the Juubi kept finding the thoroughly hidden shelters. The Shinobi were puzzled as to how it found the civilians each time without fail, before realizing the Juubi was tracking human chakra. The shelters of civilians were to the beast, pockets of concentrated human chakra, standing out in the sea of natural energy. That tidbit of information leaked faster than a dam riddled with fifty-feet holes.
The shelters emptied themselves in a record amount of time, and the NSA disbanded, even more short-lived than the last alliance. Every man was for himself now, because living with someone else was painting a target on your forehead, shouting 'Hey Juubi! I'm over here!".
Men fought for territory and solitude. The strongest had the better chance of survival. Man had reverted to beast.
Of course, a few clans like the Yamanaka, the Akimichi and the Nara stuck together till the end, their bond intact even in the face of certain death. But not all men were so brave. And the Juubi tracked the humans mercilessly, slowly but surely eliminating any and all humans it 'saw'.
By now, everyone had abandoned hope: their champion had to be dead.
But, contrary to popular belief, Naruko was still in the land of the living. Granted, she was toeing between the fine barrier between life and death, but her heart was still pumping. Knocked out and severely injured by the Juubi's fear and consequent lashing out, she was buried under rubble and sojourning in her own mind.
Uzumakis, everyone knew, were extremely hard to kill- only a direct hit to a vital point or an extreme quantity of damage could kill an Uzumaki. In fact, the Uzumaki Vitailty had come this close to being classified as a Kekkei Genkai. Fortunately, or rather, unfortunately, they were massacred. You see, a Kekkei Genkai needed at least ten bearers to be considered one and actual proof of it existing. Thus, the Uzumaki not-bloodline remained a secret.
And so, Naruko, unconscious, and completely ignorant of what was happening outside, slumbered under debris, Uzumaki blood working on mending her body by pumping wave after wave of chakra through it. It was a slow process due to the sheer quantity of damage her body had endured.
Finally three months later, Naruko startled awake with a gasp. Earth rushed and filled her mouth, and she choked, spitting out the dirt from her mouth, only for more dirt to pour in. Blindly, she let out a pulse of concentrated chakra that blew away the rubble crushing her in a massive explosion. The sound echoed for miles around, and Naruko, too exhausted to stand, kneeled on the ground, waiting for the squad of ninja that was sure to come and investigate the cause of the explosion. She waited, ears strained and senses stretched out to sense any approaching ninjas but no one came. Slowly, the exhausted Jinchuuriki stood up, heavy doubt weighing in her stomach like lead. She shakily started to climb the walls of the crater her pulse of chakra had dug, her body trembling with exhaustion.
When she reached the top, she paused, panting heavily.
Her body was weak, and her minded was clouded. She felt like Lee had mistaken her for a training post, and gone all out. Kami above, her head was just one massive ball of freaking, pulsing pain! Gritting her teeth, she stumbled towards the trees she could see a few miles away. Judging by the height of the sun in the sky, night would fall in a couple of hours: she had to build a shelter, and scour the small forest for berries and roots for dinner. Then, in the morning, when she'd wake up, she'd puzzle over the missing ninjas. Naruko, after a meagre supper, fell into a dreamless sleep curled up on a bedding of leaves. Once again, her blood worked its magic on her body, returning muscles and body to their pre-atrophy state.
The next morning, after a brief breakfast of the leftover nuts, Naruko felt a lot better than yesterday. In fact, she felt like brand-new. Shrugging, and pining the blame on the regeneration Kyuubi provided her oh-so-graciously, she set off to find her home Village.
After a few hours of tree jumping, she stumbled upon a disgusting sight: a man was hunched over the body of a deer, and… eating the flesh raw, like an animal. A kunai, looking worse for the wear, laid on the side, obviously the weapon the man had used to kill the deer. Naruko jumped down from the tree she was standing on.
"Oy, what are you doing? You could get sick, eating raw meat like that!"
The man tensed, and grabbed the kunai in his hand. A low growl rumbled from the old man's throat and made Naruko tense.
The dirty man suddenly whirled around, and charged at her, eyes glinting madly and blood-soaked teeth bared in a vicious snarl..
"This is my land! My territory! My prey!" he shrieked madly, swinging the kunai in wide arc, from left to right., and then back. Naruko merely stepped backwards, before hitting his kunai-wielding wrist with a sharp, precise two-fingered tap. The man howled and the kunai clattered to the ground, his hand twitching uncontrollably because of the nerve strike. He fell to his knees.
"A shinobi… Those damned shinobis! Must… get away… Juubi… The Juubi will come… Death… Chakra," the dirty, scruffy, foul-smelling man muttered under his breath, favouring his injured wrist, and rocking backwards and forwards slowly. Naruko approached him warily, aware that each step she took towards the man caused him to bristle more and more, like a wild dog.
"Hey, I'm not going to hurt you, old man. Just calm down," she said soothingly. "Why are you here, alone? Why don't you go back to Konoha with me, and they'll give you proper food, and shelter? That would be better, right?"
The man stopped rocking back and forth, and slowly began to shake with silent laughter. Before long, he was giggling madly.
"Stupid, sssstupid girl… The Juubi, it comes… It comes and poof! The humans go away… Jun remembers, oh yes! Jun saw, yes he did! Saw the Great Beast! The Great Beast with the great Big Eye! The Demon!" The man hissed the word "demon" like it sullied his tongue to merely pronounce it. He calmed down a bit from his anger spat and continued mumbling in his dirty beard. "Jun remembers his shiny, shiny, shiny headband! Jun was so proud…. He had a wife. But the Villages are gone! And so are the people! Gone, gone, gone… " The man crowed, getting up and dancing drunkenly. Suddenly, he was in Naruko's face.
"The Juubi comes! It is heeeeere!" he breathed, eyes smouldering with insanity, before he jumped backwards, a clawed finger pointed ominously towards her. "He will come for youuuu! You should run, Little Shinobi girl, or you will go poof, too!" And then the man picked up the kunai and slit his own throat, falling to the ground with a thump. Naruko shrieked, and rushed to pick up the man's body.
"Hold on! Why did you do this, Jii-san? What were you talking about? What's happening with the Juubi?" Naruko tried desperately to keep the man awake, shaking him in an effort to ward off death for just a few more seconds. It was all in vain, because the crazy shinobi's eyes became glassy, and a red, bubbling sigh left his lips. The man had died.
Naruko, thoroughly disturbed, took a day to bury the mad shinobi's body and pay her respects to him, before she once again set in search of her Village. Days passed, and she met men and women similar to the madman. They all muttered about the Great Beast, and the fall of the Villages, and each one of them feared and hated shinobis. The heavy doubt weighed more and more each passing day until, one day, she stumbled upon Konoha. Or what was left of it.
A huge valley with a range of mountains on one side and a river flowing by on another laid before her. Remains of what had been great walls circled charred ruins. The only movement from within the walls was tattered cloths that had once been refugee tents fluttering gently in the wind that carried the smell of cooled ashes. The place was absolutely deserted, and destroyed.
On the mountains, you could barely recognise five vague, human like heads carved into the stone; the Hokage Monument. The blind, still intact eyes of the stone Sandaime still looked upon a village that was no more, guarding mere memories of Konoha.
Naruko stepped into the Village, walking towards the mountains, numbly noting that this corner of this particular ruin had been the hospital, this one her apartment block, this one the Shinobi Academy, and so on…
The Juubi had destroyed the Village. And if the mutterings of the insane wild-men and women were to be trusted, it was hunting down everything that had human chakra. According to the state of the ruins, it had been destroyed at least three weeks ago: pillagers had already raided the food stores she knew were buried underground.
To her relief, there were little cadavers in the ruins, which meant the bulk of the population had left before the attack. But pieces were still missing, such as why the Juubi was attacking everyone the way it did.
And so began the frantic search for data on the Juubi. For months she hunted for leads on how to defeat it, its weaknesses or even a special weapon, specifically tailored to defeat those bothersome rampaging ten-tailed demons. But no dice. Information on the demon was few and far-in-between, and at best barely reliable- one of the sources, a musty, tattered book, found in a clan archive of the Snow Country even said the bloody thing was a Demon General to a Demon God. Being a shinobi, and not one for waste, she sealed away every single scroll and book she found be it Jutsus, theory, contracts, missions logbook, summoning contracts, history timelines, geography maps, physic theories, science treaties and so on. Hell, she even gathered cooking recipes. She was now literally a walking library.
Naruko had to face the Juubi, and determine its weaknesses during the battle itself, on the fly- if not for her, than for the future fighters. It didn't mean she wasn't scared; Kami, she was practically sure she was running towards her death.
Tracking the monster down took no time at all: the demon towered over the treetops, and left a clear, easy–to-follow trail of destruction.
It had fleshed out since the last time Naruko had seen it: its spindly legs that looked like they had belonged on a newborn calf had thickened with muscles, as had his chest, covering its once sticking-out ribs.
Naruko wasted no time at all: a burst of Shunshin later, she was standing behind its head, and had her Kyuubi Chakra Mode on. Seconds later, she smashed a Tailed Beast Ball on the back of its head, retreating with another Shunshin to a respectable distance, just in time to watch the Tailed Beast Rasengan implode. The Juubi howled with pain, back arching, before it zeroed in on Naruko. Immediately, three of its tails rushed forward, their tips sharpening to deadly spikes. Naruko dodged the first by jumping jumped on the second, launching five kunais with her most powerful Explosive Tags tied on them on the third one to take it out of service. She jumped once more off the second tail, her jump further propelled by the quintuple explosion that took a good chunk of Juubi's third Tail. Naruko landed on the Juubi's chest, ducking under a surging fourth tail meant to bat her off and immediately began to run. Momentarily deactivating her Kyuubi Chakra Mode, she made a good forty Shadow Clones, before reactivating the cloak of golden chakra. Each clone made at least one version of Rasengan, and the air was filled with the familiar high-pitched wailing of a few RasenShurikens twirling in the hands of a few overzealous clones. One even flipped of the Juubi with its spare hand, scowling darkly at the demon. On some unspoken signal, the clones branched off. Ten of them focused on its arms, another ten focused on its legs, and another five concentrated on its chest. Then, as one, they smashed the attacks down, bubbles of blue wind energy blooming on the Juubi's body like particularly destructive flowers. The Juubi lurched and fell to its knees, legs and arms hanging by a shred of skin and a massive crater on its chest. Naruko had no time to gloat over a job well done because suddenly, all ten tails were bearing down as one on the fifteen remaining Shadow Clones. All identical, undamaged ten tails. Naruko paled.
Shit. The Juubi has regeneration.
Obviously, snorted Kyuubi. I have regeneration and I'm weaker than him. Besides, all Tailed Beasts have that power: we're chakra after all.
Instead of being a smart ass, can you come out for a sec? I need help over here.
Kyuubi needn't to be told twice. A Shadow Clone tensed for a second when a foreign consciousness invaded it, before its lips split in a wide grin that wasn't entirely human. The Kyuubi-possessed Shadow Clone redoubled its efforts, batting away and dodging deadly blows while laughing insanely.
"This is fun! I can see why humans fight all the time!"
Naruko sweat dropped as she jumped over a swing of a spiked tail. He was enjoying it way too much for a life-threatening situation. The Juubi could absorb him, and Kurama was laughing like it was no big deal!
"This is serious, Kurama! Stop laughing and make yourself useful! Distract him, I need to find a weak point!" she hollered over the angry bellows of the Juubi.
"Killjoy," Kurama muttered under his breath before he charged up a Tailed Beast Rasengan on the fly, running up to the Juubi's chin and smashing it there. The explosion forced the Juubi's head upwards, and it was stunned momentarily. Naruko wasted no time and immediately began her transition to Sage Mode, closing her eyes in concentration, and melding her fingers in the Ram Seal to focus her chakra. When she opened her eyes again, her pupils were slit sideways, and her irises were a beautiful honey-golden colour. What seemed to be eye shadow stained her eyelids, and cool energy now coursed her body, like a breath of fresh air. Naruko couldn't help but sigh of relief- a sigh that was brutally interrupted by a claw-tip that pierced her shoulder, eliciting a scream on her part, and only missing her head because Naruko had leaned it to the side at the last moment. Another claw-tip plunged into her stomach, and blood spurted out of her mouth. Naruko grasped the claw that went through her with hands slick with her own blood. Her widened eyes returned to blue, and the orange faded from her eyelids. The two claws retreated with a wet suction noise, and Naruko fell to the ground, every clone dispelling together in a poof of chakra-smoke, even the one housing the Kyuubi. Kurama was back in the seal faster than he could say 'Sage of the Six Paths', and caused him a nasty amount of mental backlash. He dropped like a fly. A huge, red fly, with nine tails and bunny ears.
This is why no one saw the Juubi contemplate Naruko, head cocked to the side like a particularly ugly, curious puppy. When Naruko stopped interesting it (because, really, watching something sleep only held something's interest for so much. Unless, you're Edward. Then, in that case, it is perfectly entertaining, enjoyable, romantic and not at all stalker-like to watch your someone sleep.), the Juubi left to track down another one of these pesky humans that were getting harder and harder to find.
And lo, Naruko fell into another Uzumaki Healing Coma. If her body had a voice and could speak, it would have called Naruko a string of insults involving mushrooms, a dead fox and a relation to a brain-dead llama. For our younger readers, this list was censored, but to help you imagine how vulgar the profanities were, Uchiha Itachi would have fainted, had he heard them. Yes. It was- could have been- that bad. Thank Kami-Jashin-Buddha-whoever-is-up-there for mute, non-sentient bodies.
After a month of coma, Naruko finally woke up. Again. And had to take a day of rest and food to get her body up to par. Again. But unlike last time, she didn't find anyone. At all.
No matter how hard she looked, with clones, with Chakra Sensing, with emotion sensing, she couldn't find anybody. She looked for weeks and weeks, cautiously staying as far away from the oppressive mass of chakra that was Juubi as she could. She kept on finding ruins, and remains of human habitation, but no sign of the actual people living there. It was like they had been erased from existence.
After those weeks spent searching for a human being, any human being, Naruko had to face reality: the genocide was over. The Shinobis were all dead.
A few days later saw Naruko sitting at the top of a mountain, legs dangling into the great plunging depths, eyes glazed and mind stuck on this one thought: this can't be happening.
It seemed just like yesterday that Sasuke looked down his nose at her, that Sakura cooed at the Uchiha and that she played awesome pranks on the stupid villagers.
Then, Orochimaru. Sasuke's betrayal. The Akatsuki. Pein. Madara. The Juubi.
Where was everyone? Was this a Genjutsu? Some elaborate, well thought out Tsukuyomi? Apparently, Tsukuyomi was an unbreakable illusion, but then, why wasn't Obito here to gloat at her? Why did he make himself die in the Genjutsu? If she waited enough, would the illusion fall apart? But, it's already been around six months since Obito's supposed death, why hadn't it dispelled yet?
But then again, a hopeful voice timidly stuttered, time passes differently in dreams. Why not in illusions?
The overbearing evidence that it actually happened quickly crushed the timid voice. The Moon was not Sharingan Red, and Rin was nowhere to be seen. If this was Obito's Paradise World, then he was really weird.
Naruko stayed like this for a long time, not moving one inch, just staring blindly at the oxymoron that the Shinobi Island had become, a verdant graveyard, an abundant Hell, a barren Eden.
Then, she started blaming herself. Had she been strong enough, she could have banished the demon, dragging its soul to Hell along with hers. The dead could have lived. Had she been fast enough, she could have saved Killer Bee. Two trained Jinchuurikis working in tandem could have defeated the demon, strong as it had been. Had she known what was to come, she would have given in to Obito. The Moon Eye Plan and the Eternal Tsukuyomi were supposed to guarantee paradise on Earth, or so Obito said. Anything was better than this, even mindless servitude. At least, she wouldn't have felt guilty for the dead in the Eternal Tsukuyomi. It was all her fault! How could she have been this stupid?! Why hadn't she trained enough?! Everything could have been avoided with a little training!
Being the hero was all fine and good, now wasn't it? Champion of the deceased, what a great honour!
She would make the Juubi pay!
Naruko let all her emotions in a scream, and howled her challenge to the very heavens until her throat was raw. She let her emotions run free, and the Kyuubi's chakra was forcibly torn from him to form a red bubbling cloak to cover her body. She grew claws and fangs, her beautiful sunny blue eyes turned scarlet, and the scars on her cheeks deepened, and spread, the result of the demonic chakra pumped through her entire body.
Immediately, she bolted towards where she could feel the roiling mass of living natural chakra was.
When she got there, she had a massive double take. The Juubi was, for lack of a better word, falling apart. Or melting. A weird fusion between the two.
One of its legs and one of its arms were missing, and the left side of the Juubi's head was dripping flesh like some weird demon-version of an Oz-Witch doused with water. The Juubi tried to stand up, but his remaining arm collapsed under it, and it crashed to the floor. A long, keening whimper escaped the Juubi as it struggled vainly to get up.
Naruko's anger slowly ebbed out as she watched the pathetic sight before her. It was like watching a foal taking its first steps. Only this foal had committed genocide, and could actually walk before. Slowly, jump-by-jump, she got closer to the demon that now had stopped struggling. It laid on the ground, breath coming up in short, scared puffs, like a terrified animal.
Its scared, Kurama. What do I do now?
You could have warned me before you took my chakra like that, brat. And I don't know… Old Man Rikudo never said anything to us about the Ten-Tails being like an animal… Anyway, if it's an animal, it's considered innocent, right?
It's a she. The Juubi is female.
… You CHECKED?! Don't you have better things to do? Like decide what to do with the overgrown puppy monster?
Naruko resisted the urge to call him out on the kettle calling the teapot black, and replied: She's dying anyway. Look at her eyes… errr I mean, eye. It's glazing over. And if her body melting is anything to go by, she's losing structure. Like a Jutsu failing because you didn't use enough chakra. Wasn't the Juubi's body made with the First's cells, held together by a Jutsu?
Even as Naruko conversed with Kurama, thick globs of the Juubi's flesh were falling to the ground with resounding splats, before sinking to the ground without a trace. The Earth was absorbing Juubi back into itself.
The Juubi let out another drawn-out whine, and squirmed, nearly crushing Naruko in the process. Her unique eye focused on Naruko and she whined again, more softly this time, nearly pleadingly.
It looks like the Juubi wants you to do something….
Naruko approached the Juubi warily, patting the skin near her eye soothingly, like one would stroke a dog. The Juubi's throat rumbled and her remaining tails swished the air in contentment, and-
Holy shit… Is the Juubi…
Purring and wagging her tails? Apparently, yes.
" Onee….Chaan…"
Naruko jolted. Had the Juubi just called her Big Sister? No, she couldn't have, right? The Juubi was an animal, and couldn't speak, right? But apparently, the world liked to prove her wrong, as the Juubi spoke, again.
"I'm fcared… Onee-chan…"
The Demon that had wiped out the entire Shinobi Civilaztion had a lisp? And a cute one, at that! Naruko stared gobsmacked as the Juubi trembled like it was indeed scared. Since the trembles were starting to kick up a cloud of dust, Naruko hurriedly petted the side of the Juubi, and she calmed down immediately.
"Ftay with me, Onee-chan… Pleafe?"
Naruko, not knowing what to do, dumbly nodded, still in shock of the recent news, and continued to pet the side of the Juubi. She stayed like this until the Juubi closed her eye, and exhaled happily one last time. Slowly, the Juubi disappeared; absorbed by the ground she was laying on, until nothing remained of her.
The Shinobi Island vegetation and wildlife became noticeably more vibrant, like the Juubi's chakra was a growth stimulant. In a matter of weeks, all the ruins were overtaken by vegetation, green hiding away the concrete and stone until no clue remained that there ever was civilization there at all.
Naruko stayed in the completely void island for three years, exploring every single country, until the curiosity got the best of her. The ocean that bordered the Elemental Nations, according to a scroll she had found, lead to another Continent. Or so the rumours said: the scroll was a bit shady, but she figured she didn't have anything to lose.
Naruko built herself a rickety boat -her specialty lied in other fields than shipbuilding- and sailed away, leaving behind her the Nations where memories and animals cohabitated, a barren Eden of sorts. Once she was a safe distance away, she casted a massive Genjutsu dome, to keep everyone away and to leave the Shinobi Continent untouched so it could serve as a hideout. But mostly, she didn't' want the memories of her friends to be disturbed by curious archaeologists. No doubt they'd ravage the island to find clues on the Shinobi Civilization, and Naruko preferred to be safe than sorry.
And when she reached land, it was like she had landed in a different world or in the past: the civilization there were far less advanced than she! They lived in cities, but they had no electricity. They spoke a strange language, filled with strange words. Their writing was from left to right, and it was unlike anything she had ever seen before.
Soon, she learned that their country was called "France", and their language, "French". She learnt it, and could now speak it quite fluently. Not that she needed to, since she avoided speaking and human contact, period. She survived by stealing food, and she lived in a tree house in a nearby forest, surrounded by seals to ward off people. She later added a little garden to grow her won produce. Naruko couldn't quite face casual social interactions, because nightmares of what had transpired only too recently still, terrorized her at night. So she took to observing them from the cover of the canopy of trees.
To her dismay, the people here did not even have an ounce of chakra. After a few days' research, she reasonably assumed that shinobi did not exist on this continent. But something else was there, something that she hadn't seen ever before: dozens of odd creatures floated around, apparently unseen by the local populace. Some were even breathed in by people casually walking by, who promptly started coughing violently until the furry creature was spit out again or until they died, days later.
She affectionately called them Fuzzies, because of the soft fur that covered their small bodies. They had an endearing tendency to grab whatever was touching them with tiny-clawed hands. The Fuzzies were cute as Hell, yes, but also dangerous.
As time wore on, Naruko kept finding new creatures. There was colony of small, roundish creatures, mounted on short legs with a small pointed tail that were attracted to rotten carcasses and milk, which lived nearby. Once you got over their nasty tendency to bite fingers that strayed too close to their mouths, they were actually quite cute, and behaved like cats. Every morning, she had at least three of them, clamouring for food and petting with wide yellow eyes at the base of the tree. She would play with them for a bit and give them a bit of food, before starting her own breakfast. The creatures then played inside her home for a while, before making a small nest of clothes they found soft and sleeping there. She called them Tricksters, as they had the adorable tendency to play harmless pranks on random people.
Another race of creature she saw were little green men: they were very shy, so she had to approach them silently, otherwise they would flee. Slowly, but surely, she managed to get in their good graces when she started to make compost for her own little garden. It seemed they were heavily linked with plants, and so relished the compost. As way of thanks, they helped out with her garden, making her plants grow far faster than they should normally and produce beautiful fruits. She would also find gifts of fruit or nuts next to the base of the tree she lived in. It seemed the Green Men were a pacific race : she had never seen one of them attack something else.
She noted any and all observations she had on them as a side-hobby. Mostly, Naruko spent her days training on Mt Myoboku, leaving a few clones to read up on the collection of scrolls she had gathered. The Toads had offered their condolences, and had answered any questions she had acting as a substitute family to her.
It was through them that Naruko learned that she had survived because she was a Sage and a Jinchuuriki. As a Sage, a good part of Natural Chakra ran continually through her veins, residue from her Sage Mode. As a Jinchuuriki since birth, her chakra was constantly mixed with Kyuubi's chakra, little by little to let her body adapt to the harsh nature of demonic chakra. Since the Juubi was incomplete, missing both the Hachibi and the Kyuubi, she was technically blind. She couldn't see per se, but she could track human chakra better than a bloodhound could sniff out prey. Instead of seeing Naruko as a human, and a threat, she saw a Demon like herself, the human chakra being obscured by the much more potent demonic and natural chakra. The Toads had no clue about why the Juubi had called her 'Onee-chan'. They had advanced a few hypotheses, but none of them seemed entirely plausible.
Time passed, and her knowledge grew and grew. So did her relationship between Kurama and her. At first, it was mutual grudging respect. Then, it became genuine friendship. And then, the friendship grew into romance. Now, she had been claimed as his mate, and he as hers: this was, for demons, the equivalent of marriage. The mating ritual prevented other demons from laying their claim on the same person, and constituted a barrier against foreign influences. Of course, she didn't have sex with a giant fox. No, she wasn't in bestiality: Kurama was not a fox. Well, not really. As a chakra construct, he could assume whatever form he wanted. He just decided to take on the form of a fox. Most of the time now, he spent them as a relatively human looking male, with short shaggy red hair, and red eyes. His ears were slightly pointed, and so were his teeth, but other than that, he looked completely human. Her garden flourished under her and the Green Men's care, and more and more Tricksters came clamouring for food each day. She took up more side-hobbies like sewing, cooking, metalworking, Jutsu creating, flower pressing and medicine. She allowed herself a visit sometimes to the town that was spreading along quite nicely next to the forest, selling a few of the products of her garden under multiple Henge disguises.
And as each year passed, one thing became glaringly obvious: she was not aging. She knew a lot of time had passed when she came into town and found that the children she had seen running in the streets had become adults and had conceived children themselves, whom were already quite grown up. Yet she hadn't grown an inch, and her skin remained smooth and supple, glowing with life.
Her immortality was attributed to the joint Uzumaki not-bloodline, Jinchuuriki Regeneration and Sage training, which gave her near-perfect regeneration, and an iron cast health. She was immune to any illnesses and didn't age, but she was still mortal: if her heart was taken out of her body or her head was cut off, then she'd die. But you had to know that Naruko would make damn sure that neither of those actually happened.
She had added a few Jutsus to her arsenal; most of those invented or learnt recently, and her Frog Kata had immensely improved, due to the intense training from the Toads. She could now fight toe to toe with Kurama without the aid of her mother, both of them going all out. Of course, they fought inside her mindscape, as Naruko doubted the locals would overlook a mountain-sized fox with nine tails fighting with a girl and seemingly losing. Her strategy improved too, with the coaching of Kurama, the sly fox that he was. They played shogi for days, and meditated together. He even taught her how to model her mental plane from the sewers she had before to the much more comfortable (and cliché) rolling hills dotted with flowers under a clear blue sky where a few cottony clouds floated lazily. A light breeze swayed the grass gently, and a few trees provided shelter from the warm sun that shined happily from its place high in the sky.
Years passed, and Naruko knew it was time to move on. She had grown bored with France, had finished reading her entire stock of scrolls, and decided to travel the world as a hermit. Well, not a complete hermit, since she was with Kurama but no one knew that. She was looking at a map that apparently depicted the world.
Where should we go to, Kurama?
Bah, I don't care. Just not somewhere too hot, I don't like heat.
You're a fire-aligned demon, Kurama, and you can't stand a little heat? That's ridiculous. But fine. I'll just pick randomly in the northern hemisphere.
Naruko closed her eyes, tracing her finger along the top half of the map and chanting 'Plouf, plouf, une boule en or, c'est toi qui sort, au bout de trois! Un, deux, trois!', a silly couple of rhymes that she had overheard from a few French children.
Japan it is, then.
I heard the culture was similar to the Shinobi Civilization. Maybe the ancestors of the Elemental Countries came from there?
Maybe. It doesn't matter.
Kurama knew better than to push the subject further: the Genocide was still a sore subject, even after all those years, and Naruko's temper, once provoked, was explosive.
After sealing all of her possessions in a scroll, Naruko and Kurama set off for the Land of the Rising Sun, passing by the European and Asian continents, and then taking a ship to cross the sea that separated 'China' and 'Japan'. In the end, she had settled in the northern Japanese region of Akita.
It was there she met Yuri. Quite by accident, Naruko remembered. She had been making friends with the local Creature population, a mix of Tricksters and a new variant of the Green Men she called 'White Men', when a girl had caught her petting the Tricksters.
These Tricksters were extra fluffy and soft because of the cold weather, and it was bliss to run your hand through them. They even smelt like cinnamon!
"Who are you?" a curious, inquisitive voice piped up out from the blue.
Naruko startled badly and let the Trickster drop from her embrace, quickly reaching for a kunai in her thigh pouch. She crouched lightly, ready at any moment top ounce and dispatch someone when she realized that the one who had spoken was a young woman, of a bout nineteen years old. The girl quickly put her hands up, showing she meant no harm.
"I'm sorry I startled you! I didn't mean to! I was just on my way to feed my friends, when I saw you there, petting them! Who are you?" she quickly blurted, scared by Naruko's aggressive reaction. The blonde container relaxed, and put her kunai back in her pouch. She stood up fully, judging the girl as harmless and raised a blond eyebrow.
"If you want my name, then you should give me yours first. It's only polite, you know." Yes, she was shamelessly plagiarizing Sasuke's speech to Neji before the Chuunin Exams.
"Yeah right! Why should I give my name to a shady character like you? I'm not gonna give you my name, until I know yours!" The girl shouted boisterously, pointing an accusing finger at her dramatically before crossing her arms and nodding.
"Hmm. Is that so? Well, then. None of us know each other's name. I'll give you a nickname. Brat," Naruko paused thoughtfully before nodding, "Yes, that'll fit you like a glove."
"H-hey! Then, I'll give you one too! Moron!"
Naruko raised an eyebrow, unimpressed, before turning back to the Trickster she had dropped who was now looking at her accusingly. She crouched down, and gave it a scratch behind its tiny ears, and the Trickster purred with contentment.
"Aka-kun seems to really like you," Brat noted with a hint of amazement in her voice," Normally, he doesn't warm up to strangers that quickly. None of the Goblins ever do."
"The what?"
"The Goblins," at Naruko's blank look, she elaborated. "The creature you're petting. It's a Goblin, and they're the kin of the Earth King. Geez, didn't you listen in Exorcist Class?"
"Oh, so that's what they're called. I called them Tricksters, 'cause they played pranks on people all the time. And I'm sorry, but I've never gone to one of those "Exorcist Classes" you speak of."
Brat's eyes widened. During their exchange, she had slowly approached the single White Man in the group of creatures, and was now playing with him in the snow. "Moron, you're not an Exorcist? But how? How can you see the demons then?"
"They're demons? And I'm not an Exorcist, no. I've never heard of any Exorcists, period. Are you one?"
Brat's chest puffed up in pride. "Yes, yes I am. I'm a Exwire. Oh, right Moron. You don't know the Rankings. Umm, it's about the second promotion from the bottom, and there are eleven promotions in total," the younger girl looked determined. "My dream is to be a great Doctor: they're the Exorcists who take care of the wounded!"
"A worthy goal, I'm sure."
Naruko stood up, and brushed off the snow that the Goblin had kicked up while playing in it from her jacket.
"I have to go," with that she began to make her way towards the edge of the forest until a voice interrupted her.
"Yuri Egin, that's my name. Now, you have to give me yours!"
"Naruko Uzumaki is mine. A pleasure meeting you, Egin-chan," and she disappeared in flurry of displaced snow, but not before having given a lazy two-fingered salute.
The next day, Naruko and Yuri met up again to play with the demons. They talked a bit, bantered lightly, and exchanged random tips. Naruko slowly opened up, and talked about her life as a shinobi, leaving out all the gruesome details for the young girl. In return, Yuri talked about her overbearing father, her classmates in the Exorcist class and the duty of all Exorcists. They bonded over the fact that neither of them were particularly well accepted by their peers- Naruko because she had none except Kurama, and Yuri because of her ideals.
Time passed, and Yuri and Naruko became very close as friends. Naruko finally revealed everything about her past life to Yuri, who in turn revealed that her father was a cardinal.
One day, Yuri came back to their meeting place after the weeklong mission she had been sent on, looking extremely tired. When asked why, she made Naruko promise to never, ever reveal what she was going to say after that. The blonde agreed warily, waiting to hear the secret.
"I'm housing Satan," the youngest girl finally revealed, letting blue flames burst forth from her body in dangerous plumes.
Naruko gaped. "How? When? And why?"
Once the blue flames calmed down, Yuri explained everything: during a mission to investigate spontaneous combustions, Satan had attempted to possess her teammates, ultimately killing them. Satan was the cause of the combustions, since any vessel he attempted to possess eventually was consumed by his immense power, the blue flames. When Satan tried to possess Yuri, the flames didn't harm her, but he didn't stay. Yuri looked for him for days, looking for answers. She eventually found him, and empathized with him, taking pity on the fact that everything he tried touched was fated to be consumed.
"You let him possess you?" Naruko asked incredulously. "How aren't you affected by the blue flames?"
"Yes! I did let him possess me. I taught him about life and death, and with him I explored the world! It was wonderful!" Yuri sighed dreamily before she stiffened. "Stan wants to talk to you, I'm letting him possess me fully. Please don't hurt him."
Blue flames sprouted all over Yuri's body, and her ears sharpened to points. Her irises became like pinwheels, and her pupils became the colour of freshly spilt blood.
"You're the Naruko Yuri was talking about? You look weak! Gyahahahaha!" Yuri's voice had become distorted, like someone was talking exactly at the same time, but at a lower pitch. "You don't even look like a demon!"
Naruko snapped at this, and Kurama lent her his chakra. Soon enough, her teeth had sharpened to points, her eyes had turned scarlet and her whole body was covered in red, bubbling noxious chakra. Naruko growled viciously.
"What are your plans for Yuri? Even if she does trust you, I don't!"
The demon that possessed Yuri looked taken aback before Yuri's lips stretched into a smile that didn't belong on her. It chuckled, "So you are a demon? And a pretty fucking strong one, too. Normally, my killer intent alone should have made a lesser demon bow before me. As for my plans for Yuri, I don't have any. I'm enjoying the wonders of Assiah, something I could never do, not with those fucking weak vessels. So shut up, will ya?"
Naruko sensed no lie from the demon, and released her hold on Kurama's chakra. It flowed back into her, and she sat down calmly, beckoning the demon to sit down next to her.
For about an hour, they talked about demons, their nature, and something Naruko was curious about but had never found an answer to: where did the demons come from? According to Satan, they were surpluses of energy, which slowly acquired sentiency. Being energy, they had no physical bodies. Gehenna was dimension where they could roam free, and which they called home. To go to Assiah, the physical world, they had to take over a physical body. Lesser demons took over lesser bodies, like lizards and cats, and strong demons could take over humans. Satan cut their conversation short when Yuri began to develop burns on her body due to his long-term possession. The Demon King relinquished its hold on Yuri, and she fainted immediately. It seemed being taken over was exhausting for humans, as she slept an entire day away.
That was the last time Naruko had any contact at all with Yuri. The next day, Yuri was gone because of a mission in the south of Japan.
Years later, when Naruko learnt of the accidental death of the girl she had been proud to call her best friend, she went into mourning and created a memorial in the middle of the meadow where they first met. It was simple: a tombstone, engraved with the name Yuri Egin, and an epitaph that read: 'A dear friend, with dreams and hopes grander and more beautiful than this ugly reality. May you rest in peace.'
Naruko spent a while investigating Yuri's death, but whatever she found told her that Yuri had died in a dreadful car accident. It seemed suspicious: Satan would never have left Yuri to die, never. And then there was the Blue Night: a night, where Satan went literally crazy, and massacred every head of clergy there was.
Her investigation led her to meet Mephisto Pheles, a high-ranking guy in the Demon hierarchy. The demon was, if he was to be believed, one of the eight demon sons of Satan, and the King of Space and Time. He did not help her at all in her investigation, preferring to follow her loosely, and dropping cryptic hints there and there that made no sense at all. The fact that he knew who and what Kurama was, was terribly disconcerting, but the worst was that he treated the investigation and the lives of those around him as a game or some other form of entertainment. It reminded too strongly of Orochimaru to leave her completely comfortable around the goofy demon., and so, she did her best to find clues everywhere except where he was. It took her around fifteen years to realize that unfortunately, the best lead she had been Mephisto himself. And that led to her enrolment in the True Cross Academy, and her current situation.
Three hours had passed since the beginning of her reminiscing, and her first class was starting in fifteen minutes. Soon, she would be able to piece together the truth about what happened fifteen years ago.
Voila, finished it. Sorry for the info-dump, but I wanted to get Naruko's past out of the way. Basically it's this;
Obito looses control of Juubi.
Juubi scared of humans, kills them all.
Doesn't kill Naruko, because Naruko= Jinchuriki+Sage.
Naruko only survivor of Shinobi Continent. Since Shinobi Contient is near the coast of France, and Naruko leaves Shinobi Continent, she ends up in France.
France is in the 1600, therefore not very advanced.
Naruko leaves France after 400 years of staying in one place. Why stay in one place so long? Because of the whole Jutsu Library.
Chooses Japan with the french version of Eenie Miny Moe.
Doesnt take airplanes because she doesn't have papers.
Goes to Akita.
Meets Yuri while befrieding demon population.
Makes friends with Yuri.
Yuri finds Satan, befriends and falls in love with him.
Yuri leaves Akita, when she's not even one month pregnant with Yukio and Rin.
One year later, Shiro comes to confront her about lifestyle (ep 23 of Blue Exorcist).
Yuri gets trialed, and death-sentenced.
Ensues the Blue Night, as Satan tries to save her.
Satan can't possess Naruko because of Kurama's claim on her.
Yuri's death is covered up as an accident to prevent the tainting of the Egin name. Yukio and Rin's existance is also covered up. Naruko tries to find evidence, but everything is extremely well covered up; figures if they can hide the exorcists' existance from the rest of the world, they can cover up the death of Yuri.
Mephisto knows what happened, and taunts Naruko with hints and clues to draw her into his game. Naruko resists the tentation for fiteen years, but finally gives in.
She goes to True cross Academy.
Voila! Hope you didin't choke on all this info, because I swear the next chapter will be moe interesting. This was necessary, unfortunately.
Cheers, Tetris Remix.