Recklessness and conversation partners

I didn't need to look back to know that Minato was following me. Which in this circumstance was not ideal. I didn't know how much I would have to reveal to save Rin, and I did not look forward to an impromptu conversation with T&I because I crossed over a certain line.

So, I decided, I would just have to lose Minato.

Now, how to outrun the person dubbed "Yellow Flash"?

It wasn't as hard as it sounded. Minato was fast, but I was fairly certain that Gai could more than keep up with him if he opened the first few inner Gates.

What made Minato dangerous was the speed of his reflexes coupled with his mastery of the Hiraishin.

So, I would just have to be faster than Gai that one time he beat the snot out of me when I convinced him to train the Gates with me. Never did that again, by the way.

No pressure.

We were still in the village when I started loosening up my gravity seals with precise outputs of chakra from specific Tenketsu in my body.

It was like I was dialing down the pressure on my body and it felt glorious. I didn't even try to fight the grin that stole its way on my face, despite the urgency of the situation.

With one last leap I crossed the walls surrounding the village.

I immediately released every last inhibiting seal at once and started circling lighting chakra through my limps, a neat trick that I had bribed Orochimaru to teach me, and that had fried me while training it more than once or twice.

On that note, the Raikage was insane. The amount of lighting chakra needed to build up a whole cloak would rip one to shreds if it got out of control even a tiny bit.

With that, I pushed off the cobblestone.

I nearly faceplanted into the ground with the amount of power I used to propel myself forwards. Nearly.

I caught myself and could not help but let out a cheer as I got the hang of my new speed.

I had a few close calls with some trees, to be fair. Other than that, things went swimmingly.

After a few minutes I looked back and confirmed that Minato had turned back. I was sure he could follow me somehow, if he really wanted to. However, as Hokage things rarely ever were that simple.

My guess was that he would send a couple of Anbu after me. But they would need a few hours to find me. Should buy me enough time. Even if I had one hell of a talking-to to look forward to.

Assured, I headed out into Rin's direction.

Even with my speed it took a good hour to reach the general vicinity of the enemy's camp. For the general Genin, the distance would take an entire day.

I didn't bother with slowing down or being stealthy. Time was of the essence.

The first two shinobi I came across didn't even have the time to look up before I had buried two kunai-carrying hands into their chests.

Dimly, somewhere in the back of my head, I was still horrified by taking lives, but I hadn't lived through two wars for nothing. My hesitancy when it came to killing had died out a long time ago.

Still, this was a lot messier than I had intended, I thought to myself as I pulled my bloodstained hands out of crushed rib cages.

As I entered the big tent the enemy-nin had been guarding, I made a note to myself to practice my control with my uninhibited speed now that the cat was more or less out of the bag.

My thoughts grinded to a halt when I caught my first glimpse of Rin's prone body.

She was out cold, her upper body bare before the nins surrounding her.

On her stomach was a seal. The Sanbi had already been sealed into her. And it was quite clear why they had started with that.

That seal on her heart, the seal they would try to use to control her. Apparently, they had to apply it directly on the organ.

Her chest was open, a metal contraption pushing her ribs out of the way to allow for access.

I saw red.

I didn't know if it was minutes or seconds, but when the rage receded, I stood alone in the middle of the destroyed clearing, covered in blood and worse.

Taking deep, slightly panicked breaths, I approached Rin again.

I deliberately didn't look at her face while I concentrated on wiping away the traces of the seal on her heart. Stitching her together again wasn't hard, mostly because of the accelerated healing factor associated with being a Jinchuuriki.

I wasn't close to Rin.

I had tried to keep her at arms-length, actually.

That was also the reason she had agreed so readily to my request for applying a seal on her, I think. She feared that I didn't like her and took the opportunity to make a good impression.

It wasn't that I didn't like her, I just couldn't look at her.

"Hey, you don't have anything against me sending some of the med-nin hopefuls over to you, right?" Inaba-san asked while sticking his head in my cramped office at the hospital.

I snorted without looking up.

"You know foisting them on me won't work. They won't be able to do anything, and they'll get bored," I drawled. No way was I letting Genin anywhere near my sealing supplies. Well, maybe to restock them. Maybe. If they proved competent.

He hummed.

"But I'll be rid of them for a day."

I rolled my eyes.

"Sure, knock yourself out."

No use in antagonizing my colleagues. I didn't socialize with them, but being easy to work with made my tasks easier in turn.

I had nearly forgotten that conversation when someone tentatively knocked on my door two hours later.

"Yes?" I called and looked up.

"Ano, Uzumaki-san?" came a young, hesitant voice from the door. Two kunoichi stood there, waiting, but only one stuck in my memory. Rin Nohara.

I blinked at them, confused. Then it clicked.

"Ah, you're the interns Inaba was talking about."

I sighed.

"Well, welcome to the sealing division of the hospital. Yes, it's just me. We outsource some of the sealing to the old farts at the barrier squad and the hospital is always desperate for the next idiot that goes through the effort of studying fuuinjutsu and iryojutsu to settle for a desk job, but until then I am all that they have," I started my usual spiel.

The joke was on the hospital admins though, because all med-nin to be that they send here had the same dream of becoming the next Tsunade. They suffered through a boring shift here and never returned.

It soon turned out that there was one exception to that rule. Rin. I wasn't sure why but she started to volunteer for any chores that had to do with my department. She was seeking me out to ask for advice and clarification.

And I had a hard time with that.

Disregarding her facial markings, she held quite a resemblance to my best friend. The one I had left behind when I died. The one I had known and shared about any and everything with ever since I had been a toddler. The similarities didn't punch me in the face or anything, I could ignore them just fine at the beginning. But they snuck up on me.

It didn't help that they even shared some character traits, some gestures.

It wasn't her, of course. Not the same sense of humor, not awkward enough, way to prone to crushing on boys, etc.

It still hurt.

So maybe saving Rin wasn't about preventing Obito from going berserk and ruining Zetsu's plan.

Which was why I was about to go the extra mile.

I fished out my sealing supplies and quickly threw together one of the seals I produced most often for the hospital. A small tag that induced sleep in traumatized shinobi. Faster and safer than drugs tended to be and more reliable than genjutsu.

After making sure that Rin wouldn't wake up for quite a while yet, I started on the next seal matrix, this one infinitely more complex than the last. I worked on it for a good hour. The ground was flat but not really ideal for what I had in mind. The seals on Rin's body were easier and quicker to complete. I laid her body down in her part of the seal matrix and connected the lines.

When I was satisfied with my preparations, I took a full yin seal worth of chakra and created a shadow clone. Putting most of my clothing off to the side, I sat down inside my part of the seal and cross my legs. Wordlessly the clone starts on adding seals to my shoulders before tapping me on the shoulder.

I took a deep breath and laid down, letting him/myself continue on my stomach. As soon as the last line was completed, I felt a flare of chakra activate the seal.

For a single moment I felt overwhelming pain and then a blissful darkness surrounded me.

A single moment to contemplate if I had made the right decision.

I still wasn't sure.

The shinobi world was ruled by power and politics. At its heart it was a world of the strong eating the weak, if only up until certain point. Not even a Kage could stand against overwhelming numbers after all.

Few things were as upsetting to that world order as a Jinchuuriki. A well attuned Jinchuuriki was more powerful than most Kage and very hard to kill. They were looked at as dangerous, hard, but not impossible, to control and replaceable.

You could not steal a Kage, but you steal a Jinchuuriki, or rather; you could steal a Biju.

All that is to say: Being a Jinchuuriki would have ruined Rin's life.

If, and that was a big if, she would survive the first few weeks of her chakra system being overloaded with the Sanbi's chakra, her chakra control and her career as a med-nin would have been non-existent.

She had no clan backing her. Being Minato's student would only help her so much. Maybe in a couple more years, but right now he was still new to the position and the political game at large. Growing up in a civilian orphanage left him at a disadvantage there.

All this was disregarding outside dangers. Other villages would be after her head. Akatsuki too.

Which was why I was transferring the Biju to me.

As an Uzumaki I could handle the stress on my body that came with becoming a vessel after childhood. The rest… I tried not to think about.

This wasn't a rational decision. The extra chakra and healing ability was decidedly not worth all the attention I would sooner or later be drawing to myself.

Well, at least I would have even more in common with Kushina-chan now.

As for Rin… I was confident in my theory that the fast removal of the damaging chakra source would lead to her being able to survive. I had to hope that my clone was up to the task of fixing any issue that came with the transferal. I had to hope that I wouldn't condemn her to death.

I opened my eyes to the sight of a blue sky, no clouds in sight and the sun shining. I stared for a moment, disorientated and groggy.

Slowly, I sat up. And stared some more.

I was surrounded by an ocean. Nothing but water all around except for the stone platform I was sitting on.

Needless to say, I was confused.

After a few seconds the water started to move. A shadow appeared under the surface, quickly becoming bigger and bigger. A large shell broke the water and finally made it click in my mind what happened.

This was my version of the sewer.

Huh. A lot better. Very spacey.

A loud grumble rippled the water. It took me moment to realize that the sound had come from the Sanbi and that it was some kind of laugh.

"Spacey indeed."

I was not ashamed to admit that I was too flabbergasted to speak. Knowing that something had a chance of happening was not the same as being prepared. And I was not prepared for a casual conversation with a Biju.

My foreknowledge was one thing. At this point, I had lived in my second life longer than in my first though, and while the core of my being had already been forged long before I ever set foot in the academy, some things still stuck. Like the impression that Biju were scary. Really, really scary.

"Hi," I ended up saying thoughtlessly.

Well, it was a start.

"Hello human," the Sanbi answered, somehow giving me the impression that he (?) was amused. Could have been just my imagination though. The whole turtle thing made it difficult to read him. And his chakra was just… so different. Although to be fair, I had no real talent in chakra sensing.

"My name is Takeshi Uzumaki. Nice to meet you. May I ask for your name and pronouns?" I continued on autopilot. Did Biju even need gender roles? Probably not. Urgh, that topic was already giving me headaches.

Sanbi stared at me for a moment. Long enough for me to wonder if I had fucked up by asking. I was pretty sure that I knew Sanbi's name, but it had been quite a while since I had watched the anime and I had always been bad with names.

I still hadn't gotten down Shikaku and Shukaku. At least no one knew that I was frequently calling the Nara clan head by the name of the Onetailed. By now everyone thought that I was doing it to get on the man's nerve. Well, everyone except Nara, who didn't care and could easily see that my embarrassment was genuine.

Anyway.

"Pronouns?"

Shit. How to explain that concept.

"Do you identify as male, female, something in between or totally other?" I asked, already regretting having brought that up in the first place.

Again, staring.

"I guess male is alright," the Sanbi decided.

"And my name is Isobu. I'm afraid that I can't really say I am all that enthused to meet you."

I scratched my head, a bit embarrassed.

"Well, that is understandable. I can't make any grand statements about freeing you or anything but I'll endeavor to make your stay with me as comfortable as possible," I said. Now I felt like a hotel clerk.

Isobu sighed.

"This is definitely the best seal yet, at least."

At that I brightened up and beamed at the turtle.

"You like it? Thank you! Was a bit of guesswork because I can't really test what it would be like inside the seal, you know?" I started rambling, proud of my accomplishments.

…

Ok, maybe my play at being as covert and unnoticeable as possible had left me with something of weakness for compliments. Sue me.

"Oh, this your work?" Isobu asked. He sounded genuinely curious. And I was a sucker for a captivated audience.

I shifted around until I sat cross-legged and leaned forward.

"Yeah! Fuuinjutsu is my passion! I can explain the seal to you if you want? What do you know of sealing?"

I didn't need to look in a mirror to know that I was employing puppy-eyes. The same that always worked on Mito-baa-chan and Kushina-chan. They seemed to work on my new turtle friend too.

The next good hour or so (time was weird in the seal), we discussed many, many seal related topics. Apparently, Isobu had used them every now and then when he was younger to keep his mischievous brothers (my guess was Kurama and Shu/Shikaku) from bothering him.

It didn't take the Biju long to become very chatty. He was very clearly starved for some form of civil conversation.

But inevitably, we had to come to more serious topics.

The conversation ebbed and we sat in comfortable silence for a few minutes.

"Why did you seal me into you?" Isobu asked. His voice was as gentle as before, if a tad quieter. Nevertheless, I got the distinct impression that I would be judged on my answer.

I hummed to give myself a moment to think.

"Because you were sealed in my kouhai. She is a medic. Her career would have been over, even if I think you two would have gotten along well. People would have been after her. She didn't sign up for this," I answered. As my thought wandered so did my eyes. I stared sightlessly at the horizon.

"But you did? Why."

"I can deal with what is coming. I hope. I have been preparing for a long time."

With that my thoughts returned to the here and now. I turned my head to look Isobu in the eye.

"The last member of my close family, Kushina, she has your eldest brother sealed in her."

As I said that I could feel tension seep into Isobu. His eye narrowed.

"There is an organization out there, Akatsuki, that is after all Biju. They all have slightly different goals, but it boils down to the same problem for me. Sooner or later, they will come for my little cousin. They will also come for you," I explained seriously.

Isobu frowned.

"I don't understand. Humans use us all the time for their powerplays. What is so different about them?" he asked.

"The first difference would be the power they have. The second is who is behind them," I sighed. "It goes a few layers deep. The official leader calls himself Pain. But in truth the organization is led by Madara Uchiha, who went into hiding after the fight with the Shodaime," I gestured to Isobu, "Which led to the Biju being sealed. They more or less want the Tentails to power a giant genjutsu. To achieve true peace."

There was some heavy sarcasm in that last sentence. Isobu stayed quiet, even as his tails moved a bit more erratic after my mention of the Tentails.

"Anyway. Now comes the kicker. As far as I know, Madara was manipulated by some sort of plant parasite called Zetsu. Zetsu was created by Kaguya. You can guess what she wants the chakra for."

I waited for a good minute before Isobu spoke up, the only sign that he had listened were his agitated tails.

"How do you know?" he asked quietly.

"The short answer is reincarnation. The long one involves parallel universes and a lot of half-remembered memories," I stated bluntly. If anyone would believe me, it would be the one of the chakra construct kids of the Sage. I surely couldn't be the weirdest thing Isobu had come across in his life.

Isobu's tails stilled as he looked at me, baffled.

Apparently, I made his top three. At that point he stopped trying to get them in an order.

It wasn't the reincarnation in itself. That part was somewhat common.

It wasn't even that I remembered my last life. Uncommon, but meh.

But the weird foreknowledge I had? That did it for him. Prophecy existed. The toads could attest to that. But Isobu and I agreed that I wasn't some form of oracle.

So.

After a long discussion, Isobu believed me.

Which got us to the next point: cooperation.

"I won't be your bottomless chakra supply. I don't like fighting.", Isobu laid out bluntly.

I blinked.

"Fair enough," I decided. I cocked my head.

"But can I count on you to boost my healing?"

Isobu hummed in thought.

"I don't see the harm in that. I like you. I don't want you to die that fast."

I smiled at him, taking that as the compliment it was.

"Thanks."

Honestly, I wasn't really strapped for chakra anytime soon.

"Oh, is there a chance of me inheriting some kind of chakra nature change from you?" I asked. I wasn't clear on that.

"It depends. What nature do you have?"

"Lightning," I answered promptly. Ha, otherwise I could have forgotten about trying to pull off that lightning chakra step.

"Hm, interesting. I don't think I had that before in a host. If a change takes place, it will be a mixture of my water nature and your lightning. Though it is a bit unlikely. Usually, my Jinchuuriki's chakra networks are more malleable because they are younger," Isobu explained patiently.

"Still, I think you prove that stranger things have happened," he added dryly.

I laughed.

"You know, I think you would make a good teacher," I thought out loud. Isobu mustered me critically.

"Why do I have the feeling that you are thinking something stupid?" he asked with playful distrust.

"Oh, you can never go wrong with that assumption. Kind of in the job description for a sealing master," I waved his concerns away. Strangely, he didn't seem dissuaded.

"On a totally unrelated note. Do you know if there is a turtle summon contract and if there is - where I could find it?" I asked innocently.

Isobu stared at me, motionlessly. I couldn't be sure but I thought his chakra slowly started to ebb out an emotion that I would describe as… - exasperation.

Hey, I was getting better at this sensing thing!

AN

So. The second chapter. Feedback is of course very welcome!
The pronoun conversation. I didn't go in with a plan when I started writing the first meeting between our MC and Isobu and that is the sort of slightly nonsensical first topic a modern person would stumble in to. I had that convo once with my parents and I can only say: never again. Not qualified for this, told them to google it.
Oh and I don't know a lot about Japanese (hah, has it been obvious in the half-hazard way I have been using it in this story? ;P) so… that conversation might make even less sense when you think about how they should be speaking Japanese. Welp, suspension of disbelief is thing.
Isobu in general. I tried to model him after canon but he barely has any personality there so… I made one up. I always had Isobu as one of the calmer and nicer Biju (like I had seen him portrayed in Fanon) so decided to skip at least a part of the Biju-Jinchuuriki-tension. The part at the start where the Biju is super pissed and the Jinchuuriki has to talk-no-jutsu the Biju into becoming something of a non-issue. Wanna try something different. We'll see how that pans out for me.
And before any of you wonder: Gai has the tortoise summon contract. Turtle, tortoise, not the biggest difference (hey, in German both translate to "Schildkröte" - literally "shield toad" btw and isn't German a fun language? – so it seems even more like semantics to me) and I am 70 % sure that that's a translation thing but having him sign Gai's contract wouldn't have worked for what I have in mind.