A/N #1: Due to a certain study to see which one you guys like enough for me to update, this one won for August. I might do Cat, Fish, Flames or How Far Can You Go? next. It just depends. Also! This and one more chapter until I get to start writing out the chapters! Yay...^^" Anyway I'm going to try to update one or twice a week. You see how I did that try? Well that's because school started and I'm not used to the school schedule and I need to have a writing time that revolves around school too. I'll figure out something next week though!~

A/N #2: You guys wanna hear about my second day of school? Well in the afternoon it turned out we had a bus change and the bus driver didn't even know where we lived. So some high schooler, I think, had to show him around until she got of the bus. Then somehow I end up helping the man since I get off before two people and I know where everyone lived. Not just any man though, an old man. Probably older than our own bus driver and he's pretty old. Anyway, I only knew where everyone from last year lived so we end up somehow, I really have no clue how, leaving that neighborhood with people who lived in that neighborhood on the bus. We dropped of the people who lived there and went back in the neighborhood before. I was trying to get everyone home but they kept yelling about "I wanna go home!" or "It's hot on this bus!" and all that -pardon my French- shit. And I was getting fed up with everyone and my friend told me I looked like I was about to cuss everyone out. So two high schoolers and a 7th grader had to help me take everyone home. By the time I got home I felt like breaking stuff. So that's why I'm updating today, since I'm in a good mood and I'm about to get food.

When you fight to protect those who are precious to you... that is when you become truly strong. -Yuuki Haku

Chapter 2: Kurama's Wrath

No one was sure what had happened. One moment the night was silent, cool, and peaceful.

Then the Kyuubi had appeared at the gates, terrible and enraged. It had moved closer, unhindered, cutting a bloody swath through the defenders that came to stop it until it came to the mighty walls of stone that surrounded Konoha. It paused, only for a moment, then it crashed through the towering fortifications as easily as a child would fall through rice paper.

Ninjutsu washed off it like water off a duck's back. Genjutsu found no hold. Weapons and taijutsu were less than useless.

It was a hopeless battle, already all but lost.

Then from somewhere beyond the Hokage monument an unholy roar lounger than anything heard in living memory shook Konoha to its very foundations as something rushed toward the village. A moment later all light from the moon vanished as an enormous shadow sailed over Konoha and crashed into the Kyuubi with a sound like thunder, driving it away from the village with a force and fury that not even the mightiest of summons could hope to match.

And all around the village, Konoha's defenders froze in shock as they stared in wonder and confusion at the sight before them.

'What in all the hells...' Sarutobi Hiruzen whispered from the pathetic ruins of the walls that had protected his village for over a hundred years, Enma hanging limply at his side in the form of a hyoinbo as he tried to make sense of what he was seeing.

A second Kyuubi, battered and enfeebled, had joined the fight...

Moments earlier...

For a split second Kurama struggled against the fabric of the universe, holding his existence together by the barest of threads as he focused on his goal with a single minded intensity that could only be described as some kind of temporary insanity and then...

Then he was falling out of the sky, his abused body crashing into the ground and tumbling into the trees with resounding crash.

'Wait... trees!' His eyes going wide, Kurama leapt to his feet, his eyes swiveling in every direction. Trees! Stars! Mountains! Rivers! He was out! He was- 'It worked...' he realized, staring around in awe. It had actually worked! Somehow, by the grace of something, it had worked!

Where was he?

When was he?

Throwing out his senses he took the measure of the area around him, feeling, searching. He was in the Fire Country, somewhere just east of Konoha and he could feel...

'Fear...' he thought, his eyes fixing on a point is the west where he knew his container's home lay. He could feel panic, hysteria, anger, but most of all there was fear in Konoha. A kind of terror like he had felt the night when...

Kurama's eyes went wide.

It was like the night Naruto had been born. The night Tobi had ripped him from Kushina's seal and set him on that pathetic village. The night everything went wrong...

'Perfect...' Grinning in unrestrained triumph, Kurama barreled forward with unimaginable speed. Weakened though he was, he closed the distance between his previous position and Konoha within seconds, roaring a battle cry as he coiled the distance between his previous position and Konoha within seconds, roaring a battle cry as he coiled to leap over the village; all the while gaining a progressively clearer image of the village through his empathy. What he found as he leaped into the air toward his past self surprised him. Even as he crashed into the other Kyuubi he felt... nothing. Where he should have been able to feel a dense mass of anger, hate, and frustration struggling against the power of Tobi's sharingan there was an empty void.

'But that couldn't be right. There should have at least been...' scowling, Kurama shoved those thoughts aside for the moment and focused on the task at had. He had staggered his opponent, he had the advantage.

Now he had to press that advantage.

Ducking low, Kurama drove his shoulder into the other Kyuubi's chest, lifting its forepaws off the ground and throwing it further away from Konoha before rushing forward and slamming into its exposed flank.

The other Kyuubi roared, taking the hit and rolling to its feet but still Kurama felt nothing from it.

Rushing forward like he had before, Kurama lowered himself again as if to perform the same tackle when the other Kyuubi dodged to the side attempting to flank him.

Kurama was waiting.

Planting his forepaws, Kurama torqued his hindquarters to bring seven of his tails into the path of the other Kyuubi's head even as the other two snaked out to snared his opponent's forepaws.

'He doesn't move like me,' Kurama observed as he completed his spin, dragging the other Kyuubi forward and off balance. Even when under Madara's and Tobi's control he had still been himself. So... 'Why doesn't he move like me?' He wondered as he brought on of his forepaws down to deliver a devastating blow to his counterpart's skull only for it to release a half formed and hastily constructed Imari into his chest, throwing him into the air.

Roaring in pain, Kurama road the blast, twisting his body through the air so that he came down facing his counterpart at it crossed the battlefield toward him, its eyes ablaze with the sharingan that controlled it.

Thinking quickly, Kurama dropped onto his flank, rolling under his opponent's charge and using his paws to hurl his counter part even further away from Naruto's village.

And still he felt nothing. It was completely empty devoid of feeling or emotion. Like...

'Like a soulless husk...' Kurama realized even as his eyes grew cold and calculating, a low snarl rumbling in his chest as he began to circle, his battled fogged mind working a mile a minute. 'Soulless...' Yes. yes, that would make perfect sense. It did not move like him because it was not him. It did not have any emotions because it didn't have any. It felt empty because it was empty.

His eyes narrowed further, his keen gaze never leaving his empty shell as they continued to circle each other. Unfortunately, husk or not, the puppet with his skin was still a threat while Tobi controlled it and possibly still a threat after Naruto's father severed that control. A biju with his level of strength but possessing no mind of its own? At best it would act on the nature of his chakra and go on a berserker rampage, which would simply cause him a great deal of trouble. at worst...

At worst, without a mind of to hold it together, it would explode and wipe out everything for hundreds of miles in every direction.

'This is not good,' Kurama decided. He had now lost the initiative and, while this... thing, may not be as skilled as him, he was severely weakened from his romp through time and space, not to mention the war before that. He could not afford to stall in hopes of that annoying blonde meddler. He needed to end this quickly. But killing it wouldn't work. Not even biju could kill biju, Gods knew he'd tried to kill Shukaku more than once. But if he dispersed it while there was no mind to control the chakra it would be the same as if-

'Wait...' Kurama thought as an idea occurred to him. There might not be a soul to anchor his younger self but his soul was here. He was here. 'That might work...' he thought. It was a soulless mass of chakra. More specifically, it was a soulless mass of his chakra. Up until this point he had been treating it as a separate biju but it... it really wasn't. It was more like one of Naruto's Kage Bunshin, a construct of his chakra. The mechanics were a little different but...

Kurama grinned cruelly to himself. He had a plan now. He could win.

He had to win...

Reaching out with his tails he grasped at the debris around him, picking up enormous chunks of upturned earth and ripping trees older than the hidden villages up by their roots, hurling the missiles at his counterpart as he gathered the chakra for an Imari of his own. All the wile, he continued to circle, stepping carefully as he continued to watch the puppet bat away the incoming missiles like annoying files. He knew they wouldn't do much damage but that wasn't the point. He needed an opening. It didn't have to be much, just something...

'There!' he thought just as a particularly large chunk of rock struck the husk in the snout, stunning it.

In that brief moment of distraction, Kurama belched an enormous gout of flame across the battlefield at the husk, engulfing his opponent in chakra fire and, more importantly, completely obscuring the space between them.

A moment later the other Kyuubi barked, releasing a pulse of chakra that dowsed most of the flames as it turned to face Kurama.

But Kurama was already gone.

Then, before the enthralled Kyuubi could even think to move, Kurama fell from the sky, driving his opponent into the ground with the force of a meteor even as he released a fully formed Imari into his opponent at point blank range.

Sarutobi's eyes went wide. "Brace yourselves!" he roared, ducking for cover and channeling chakra into ever part of his body touching solid ground.

Not a second later the world turned a blinding white as a tremendous explosion rocked the landscape followed almost immediately by a shockwave that sent any shinobi caught out in the open flying, even with the chakra most of them were all using to anchor themselves.

Then the world was silent.

"By the Gods..." Sarutobi whispered, staggering to his feet as he felt a steady trickle of blood leaking from his left ear.

Where there had been two Kyuubi, the enfeebled one stood alone, panting in the middle of an ever shrinking swirling miasma of vile chakra.

"Orders sir?" one of the AMBU asked, his voice steady despite his obvious unease as the defenders watched the Kyuubi's wounds knit shut before their eyes, the rest of its body filling out, leaving it looking healthier by the second.

"...Stand by for evacuation protocols, Captain," Sarutobi commanded. This new incarnation of the Nine Tails defeated a healthy and rested form of itself while at a significant disadvantage, if it chose to turn its fury on them now...

But, much to their amazement, it didn't. Rather than attack them, once the Kyuubi had finished absorbing the chakra cloud, it appeared to pause for a moment and the walked off in an apparently random direction, ignoring them entirely as it made its way toward the northeast.

Sarutobi frowned, staring after it. "Captain, you and your squad are with me. The rest of you begin triage and repairs!" he barked before leaping into the forest after the tailed beast. 'What are you doing...'

Reviews (For all because I don't think I did)~

Uzu the talented Uzumaki- Thank you even though it's not mine. This so far is EDelta88.

- that was the prologue this one is longer. :D

Monkeykimg (Guest): I'll do it! I love that pairing anyway!~ Here's the new update. I'll like that idea with Kurama so he going to be here... sometimes. That's a spoiler. Oh my goodness I have to switch her gender! I'm not going to pull a Bleach on this story though. p.s. this isn't mine. It's EDelta88.

aspygirlredo- here it is~ :D

xenocanaan- Here's the next chapter~

and I think I already talked to you .

Well I glad you guys liked it and I'll talk to you next time or whatever.

Arrivederci!~