九尾狐妖

The sky was alit with flames. Meteoric tongs of fire fell from the smoke-covered sky, raining upon the village in a fiery hellstorm. The air was filled with dust and thick reverberations of sound. Sounds of panic, of fear, of unadulterated terror. It was a symphony of death, and its director stood at the center of it all, his massive tails swaying with the guise of gentleness.

He was the Nine-tailed Demon Fox - Kyuubi, a mythical creature whose very presence was considered a natural catastrophe. His roar drowned out the chorus of screams around him. His paws trampled upon buildings like a child would upon a garden of sand castles.

Hundreds of tiny human figures surrounded him and prodded him warily with projectiles, explosives and weapons, all of which bounced harmlessly off the thick miasma of Chakra that shrouded his body. They might as well have been throwing pebbles. Although it didn't hurt him, their actions angered him nonetheless, the pointless pebble-flinging. In fact, everything they did angered him. He had been imprisoned and used as a weapon of war for over a hundred years. He was a weapon of mass destruction, a fact which was constantly held over the heads of those who opposed the ones who wielded his power. The Great Demon Fox had been made a tool, a slave.

The humans did nothing but fight, squabbling over land and petty feuds. Killing each other with no more compunction than they would if they were swatting flies. The humans hated each other with passion, rewarding and praising those who could best consummate that hatred with slaughter.

The current leader of the Hidden Leaf Village was a prime example. The man was widely considered the paragon of virtue and justice; he was practically revered. What made him so renowned was his ability to kill better than his peers. A Shinobi of great talent, the Fourth Hokage of the Hidden Leaf had once slaughtered an entire army - over a thousand men, women and children - in a single day. And he was put on a pedestal for it. This man, this leader of the village, then turned around like the hypocrite he was and acted as if he would never hurt fly. He had a family, despite the many families he had destroyed. He had and valued love, though it was the murder of so many of its kin that afforded it to him. He had strength, and that, in their hatred, was all the humans cared about. Their leader was a killer among killers. The best of the best. He couldn't understand their anger against the Shinobi of other nations for killing one of their own when they were guilty of the very same. Hate-filled hypocrites, all of them.

Over the centuries, their hatred filled him. He hated them. He hated them more than they hated each other. The Sage had been wrong. There was no guiding these pests. The world would be better without them.

He hated them.

Lifting his sights toward the sky, he let loose a shower of flames from his jaws.

The people screamed and ran. Their homes crumbled and burned.

A child, frozen in terror, gaped up at him stupidly with tears streaming down its cheeks. He thought of what the child would become, the lying, the killing, the hypocrisy.

The world was better without humans. He would destroy every last one of them and rid the world of its greatest pest.

Scores of the village's defenders fought at him as he lumbered toward the terrified child. He fought them off with no effort whatsoever, and as he approached his target, he grinned his widest grin. He could taste the fear drifting off the tiny child in droves, and he savored it. It merely stared up at him, consumed by the entirety of the nightmare that he was as he crushed the buildings to the child's left and right. And then, as he was about to deliver the final blow, to end the child's misery, a woman, one of the defending Shinobi, seemed to dash out of nowhere. The child was saved, carried off into the distance where he knew those too weak to fight were being gathered.

No matter. They wouldn't be surviving long. For now, he had many others to distract himself with.

The number of Shinobi that approached him seemed endless. Most of them came to be torn to shreds by his claws, to be splattered onto some surface like water balloons, and to be incinerated in the hellfire he summoned upon those too slow to avoid their inevitable doom. The village was his playground and the people his playthings to be tossed around and torn apart at will. Trampling about like a child throwing a tantrum, he engaged in a game of pest extermination.

There were those who threw themselves at him with abandon, and there were those who ran for their lives. Still others simply cowered in place, and those who hid themselves in the walls of their homes were crushed along with the places in which they'd believed themselves to be safe from his wrath. He would destroy everything, and when the Fourth Hokage arrived, he would turn the place into ashes. He would teach humanity to despair. The Hidden Leaf Village would be the first of many.

It wasn't long before the initial fear that had filled the night was coupled by a seething new emotion, by hatred. Hatred for the loss of the ones they loved and the homes they held dear. Hatred of him, the Demon Fox. They loathed him, as they were wont to do. He felt it running along his back, growing restlessly, helplessly, angrily.

A petty hatred, it was. Nothing compared to the loathing he felt for them, one that had been built up over the century. He'd had plenty of time trapped inside a seal, speared and gutted by Uzumaki chains, to let his compassion rot and his hatred grow. Having been left in those hellish prisons for a hundred years had made him incomparably bitter.

He swept around to survey the sources of the hostility that he felt rolling against him, his eyes sharp, intelligent and wrathful.

He roared. The humans cowered.

A man, a would-be hero, surged out of the air, a long, flaming katana in his hands. It was a weapon, laced with a special chakra, which could inflict lasting damage even unto a mythical beast. It was the elite Jonin. Yuhi Shinku.

The Fox brought two of his nine tails crashing into the village streets. A hurricane force of wind swept up from the earth. From the sky lightning crackled, cleaving buildings and uprooting trees. The man was swatted away and incinerated.

"Come, little humans!" He challenged menacingly. "Come to me and die!"

The hatred diminished, eclipsed by a resurgence of fear.

Above, the full moon broke out from behind the clouds. It was a wonderful night to be the powerful Nine-tailed Demon Fox, a wonderful night to be freed.