Ch.7
Kurama felt the seal loosen and rushed to her nearest Doll as her eyes darted back and forth for any sight of Naru. She felt her tears begin as she saw she was in a cage with Naru in a bassinet on the other side of the room, realizing she was in her Fox Doll. The demon made a variety of distressed animal sounds as she struggled against her cage to see Naru.
"Hurama, you may come in." The Hokage said sternly as Kurama ignored him and continued trying to reach her daughter, attempting to shake the cage off the desk she was on.
"Thank you, Hokage-sama." Hurama declared when she walked in. Why was her human Doll closed off to her? She had a paper seal on her dress. Why? Wait, Hurama is holding Furama! What is Kurama in? Why was there a third Chakra Doll? How was there a third Chakra Doll?
"Kurama, please, calm down. What you are in is a Doll made by Orochimaru before he left. It is no stronger than a regular animal. This is all a precaution with how mentally unstable you seem to be." The Hokage told her.
"You're mentally unstable!" Kurama snarled, only for indignant yips and barks to be heard.
"Boss, please. We need you to calm down. You hurt Naru." Hurama pleaded. "We need your permission to bring a Yamanaka in to talk to you. To let them in on the secret."
Kurama calmed herself the best she could, feeling twitchy. Her Dolls were trying to help her right? They weren't trying to control her, right? The demon didn't like the feeling of being trapped like this. Being in the seal was one thing, something she had come to terms with, but being trapped in a physical cage had its own visceral oppressive feeling. "F-fine! Go get them!"
"Inoichi, please enter." The Hokage called after Kurama sat on her haunches. A tall, worn-faced man with long blond hair entered the office looking at its occupants with calculating eyes. The Hokage activate a set of seals locking the room down from the outside world.
"Yes, Hokage-sama, what do you wish of me?" The man named Inoichi bowed professionally.
"What I'm about to say is a secret of the highest caliber. Higher than the laws around Naru's parentage. Can I trust you to keep this to yourself?" The Hokage told Inoichi with a stern look. "I have a patient that needs attending, but I need your word."
"Binding by seals, I suspect. Very well. I keep my patient's confidentiality utmost when it isn't for T&I, you have my word." Inoichi declared while looking keenly at Kurama in the cage.
"Good, because she's the Kyubi No Kitsune." The Hokage stated bluntly.
"I had suspected. I will try, but if she is resistant, then I have no hope of even glimpsing surface thoughts.
"How could you guess?" Hurama asked confused.
"I work for T&I, we're the department most closely tied to the information security of Konoha. We know too much because it is our job to know too much. Connecting the dots isn't hard, especially since one of Danzo's captured catspaws had just enough in his mind that we know enough to know enough." Inoichi answered blandly, as if bored.
"Good, consider this an S Class mission." The Hokage told him as the old man sat down and opened Kurama's cage.
"First, since she is a patient and not a target of interrogation, do I have her permission?" Inoichi requested while looking at Kurama, his pupiless-cyan eyes gazing into her, like he could somehow see into her essence. Fitting. Kurama nodded hesitantly and he approached before unlocking the door of the cage and reaching in. "I require cranial contact."
The vixen looked to her Human Doll wondering if she could use it instead, but settled for nudging her head into Inoichi's palm like a pet getting petted. Then, they were in the great cave network where Hagaromo had split the Juubi and Kurama whimpered from the memories this place brought. Considering this seems to be a memory, that was a rather vicious cycle.
"I see this place is significant for you. Great Kyubi, how are you feeling?" Kurama stiffened as she looked to the yellow haired man standing where her Father once had. "You seem slimmer, more feminine than on the night you attacked."
"The night he attacked, enthralling me to do so. We can see if my memories are viewable during that period, but first, yes. This is where I was born. Where my father divided the Juubi into me and my eight siblings." Kurama informed him, dodging the comment of her self-perception.
"So you were born here?" Inoichi mused to himself as he took it all in. "I am a novice with fuinjutsu, but even I can see all the engravings throughout this place have great potency." Inoichi commented while gazing around the giant unnatural cavern.
"Yes, this is where father tore us out of himself, leaving us. He formed us over years in his seal before releasing us, causing his death."
"Do you feel you killed him?" Inoichi asked as he sat down.
"No. We were killing him as we were, so he would have died either way. This way, he split the Juubi to prevent his mother's resurrection being possible, while also giving us life and names." Kurama shook her head, sad to think of her father's doomed fate.
"...As much as I wish to know more, that is not why we are here. Tell me, why are we here? How does this place pertain to your current emotional turmoil?" Inoichi questioned, taking a seat on a chair that appeared as if it always existed when it hadn't moments before.
"I…I'm the reason my siblings were imprisoned, the reason Minato and Kushina are dead. I started everything." Kurama said, trying to remain in control. "I never thought like that. I have never behaved like this. All I ever felt about these events and those was rage, contempt or ambivalence." Kurama paced around as the images of her siblings, freshly born, appeared around in the circle and next to Inoichi, stood Hagoromo Otsutsuki.
"The Sage of Six Paths, the fabled Rinnegan…ahem. Again, as much as I wish to delve into your past, so rich with lost history as it is, we shall move on." At a wave of his hand, Inoichi changed the surroundings to the temple that Kurama had lived in for the first two hundred years of life.
"How exactly is this supposed to help me?" Kurama huffed as she laid down, wondering what was with the questions. "I feel like I'm broken, aren't you supposed to fix that? I never lied before, but I did. I'm not okay. I tried to lie to myself. What is happening to me? What am I?"
"Someone who was hurt." Inoichi told the demon as he watched her before pausing on a scene of her, in a cave, with a wild-maned black-haired man who was the very definition of an Uchiha. "Before I continue, what about this scenario hurt you?"
"He enthralled me. Took away my will. Made you humans imprison me." Kurama snarled, wishing she could eat the Uchiha.
"Then this is the infamous Madara Uchiha. I will skip forward, since if you are willing later, I wish to do a historical deep-dive."
"That would set much straight, yes. Continue." At Kurama's words, Inoichi sped time ahead to when she was first sealed, into a Mokuton-made idol. "My first Sealing."
"What does this mean for you? For us, it was safety from your power, but what about you?" Inoichi said, asking for Kurama's view on what they no doubt saw as a moment of celebration.
"Unjust imprisonment. Enslavement. The subsequent enslavement of my siblings, because the Hashirama and the Uzumaki proved we could be contained, controlled, used as chakra batteries." Kurama bitterly lamented and then Inoichi moved ahead. "When they transferred me into Mito. She was a cold woman. She never trusted me, treated me as a prisoner, a resource. However, she was still the first consistent source of human interaction I ever had."
"That sounds like attachment. Captive Syndrome, most likely. What did you see in Mito?" Captive Syndrome? Well, Kurama would ask about that later, maybe.
"A daughter…I think. Even if she never trusted me, she still took lessons from my wisdom and consulted me often. When she wasn't ensnaring me in bindings for the tiniest things." Kurama said, looking into the distance. "I was the one that suggested she never give up her clan name. That she kept standing up to her mate. That kept her clan away from this horrible village."
"As a resident, I take mild offense, but considering how we've wronged you, I can understand." Inoichi's wave brought them to a young Kushina. "Kushina. This was when you were transferred from Mito to Kushina, due to the seal weakening too much for Mito to keep you contained much longer."
"So she did survive. I couldn't remember clearly, but this technique of yours pulls minute, forgotten things forward. Before you ask; I felt abandoned. I thought Mito decided she didn't need me anymore, so she foisted me on this brat. I didn't even know the seal was weakening." Kurama became deeply saddened as time flowed forward, showing so many scenes where Kushina and she had spoken. "Unlike Mito, Kushina was more like a daughter…"
"How so?" Inoichi asked in surprise.
"She opened up to me. She faced me down, told me I was her tenent and I had rent to pay for living in her body. Hah! She was hilarious! She even bargained with me! I mean, look. My cage became lavish, then a mountain valley I could not leave in the end. I hardly felt like a prisoner with her as my landlord." Then, came…
"An orange swirl mask, but that is unmistakably the same sort of Sharingan that Madara possessed, but not exactly the same." Inoichi observed as he stood up and walked through the air to look the otherwise dark-clad figure who had intruded on Kushina giving birth and sabotaged her seal.
"The night my daughter, her mate, hundreds of innocents died because this monster unleashed me, enthralled me, then had me rampage!" Kurama tore at the figure, but it was immutable.
"The attack was not in retaliation for what we did?" Inoichi asked to clarify.
"No! Given half the chance at that moment, I would have fled! My daughter would die without me in her or at least I had assumed so, meaning I had no reason to remain! If he did not do as Madara did back then, I would have ran away and found somewhere so far from humanity none would have bothered me!" Kurama roared as she clawed at the figure, only to give up.
"I see. And what of your attack on your daughter and her mate? We know they had you sealed into Naru. We know of the claw that pierced them." Inoichi asked.
"You of all people must know how genjutsu work. Had I known then what was going on, I would not have…" Kurama's eyes poured tears, which evaporated rapidly.
"My clan jutsu can detect the effects of genjutsu on memories." Inoichi said, swiping his hands. "The moment before you were sealed in Naru, have none." Kurama wilted at finding herself trying to bury those moments under another lie. She attacked of her free will. "The guilt is crushing. In a heated moment, you finished them off, but you gave them mercy. Their remains, when examined, revealed they were already dying, painfully."
"K-Kushina might have lived. She could have raised Naru." Kurama hiccuped.
"No. All her chakra coils were burned out. She was a husk. She was in great agony when she died. Mild to moderate coil enervation can be healed, but total-body enervation? Even if she survived, she would have been crippled like Mito after you were transferred." Inoichi assured her, filling Kurama with immense horror.
"Then…I can never leave Naru, not without killing or crippling her. Damn it! I had hope, that maybe, when she was an adult, at the peak of her prime, you might release me without harming her." Kurama wilted, filled with despair. "How was this meant to help? All you have done is expose my most painful memories, reveal that my hope is in vain."
"I am here to listen, to give you a sympathetic ear. And who knows, there may be a way. Medical science is always progressing." Inoichi told her. "My job here is to help you help yourself. To do that, I need to know what is harming you. More importantly, you need to know."
"Why must everything be so complicated? Mortals are too damn difficult to understand, now that I've lived as one among you, you have infected me with your complexity." Kurama groused bitterly as she lied down in the air while their surroundings faded to white.
"I don't think that is the case." Inoichi said with a smile before they were back in the chamber where Kurama was born. "You speak of the Sage in reverence a child does for their parents. Even the memories show this. You were always like this, Kurama, but you buried it."
"And what would you know?" Kurama huffed.
"A lot about the mind. I've helped many ninja recover from their trauma. The wounds don't vanish, but I help them learn how to cope with it. That's what my plan is to help you. The mind of anything that has memory and thinks as complex as ours can develop deep scars. Even animals that are not as complex as you and I, can experience trauma." Inoichi said and Kurama listened. This man treated her as an equal, not as a beast or a monster that had no feelings.
"I see, I think I understand. How should we continue?" Kurama asked with less skepticism.
"For now, I want you to think about this until our next session. I need to think on how to help you. Normally at the start, I would prescribe some medication to help you cope until we got a safer option. You being the Kyubi, I don't think that could work. My recommendation for when you feel overwhelmed is to remove yourself from the stimulation if you can, breathe slow and deep, focus on a static object and count down from ten until you feel centered." Inoichi advised.
"That doesn't sound helpful." Kurama muttered in disbelief.
"You would be surprised." Inoichi said with a kind smile. "I believe I've done all I can for now, we will meet in a week for another session." The next thing the demon knew, they were back in the Hokage office. Kurama looked around and felt her Dolls now and jumped to Hurama. Inoichi looked a little shocked when he felt her mind move. "I did not expect you to have taken over-."
"I made this body. I did not subjugate anyone so I could take care of my Naru. They are just Shadow Clones in Chakra Dolls with more independence." Kurama explained tersely.
"I see. I didn't think that was why you needed me." Inoichi said with a nervous look.
"What do you mean?" Kurama asked.
"After the incident at your home, I thought I was only trying to calm the, er, calm you down. Not a fellow Clan Leader and Kunoichi. This doesn't change anything about what we discussed. I just have a new perspective on what your needs are." Inoichi stated before he approached her and put his hands on her shoulders. "Kurama, I will be blunt. You are sexually repressed and you need to vent." Kurama's head down to her chest turned as red as her hair.
"I-I don't need you to tell me that!" Kurama stuttered and clasped his wrists with surprising meekness. If only he didn't have the scent of being claimed by another woman…
"In any case, I'll be taking my leave, Hokage-sama." Inoichi said before bowing politely and leaving with an even, measured gait.
After he left, a small white snake entered the room from the window. It slithered up to Kurama before speaking with a feminine voice. "Master Orochimaru has sent me to teach you."
"How can you help?" Kurama asked curiously while kneeling before her. The snake threw up a pile of scrolls and the vixen looked at the pile gingerly.
"I will pass material from My Master to you that he feels you are ready for. Practice what is on the scrolls. Once you master them, I will have more." The female snake told the demon and then slithered up her leg, around her waist and then wrapped there like a belt before rising up to look her in the face. "My name is Yukishi, I look forward to watching you improve."
=Fox=
Kurama stared at the scroll before her. It was some sort of fire jutsu, but she couldn't understand how this worked. The chakra molding made no sense, she normally just willed the fire to be, but that burnt her hands. "Need help?" Kurama jumped at the voice of Shikazu. He was standing on the edge of the public training ground she was using, since the private one at the Uzumaki Compound wasn't meant for destructive training.
"I think I do?" Kurama questioned as she felt herself blush. "What are you doing here?"
"Heard you were training In ninjutsu now, figured you could use a tutor." Shikazu said with a lazy smile that somehow caused her lower stomach to do flips and somersaults.
"I think I do, I can't seem to understand how to mold my chakra. I have so much I normally just will things into happening." Kurama said with embarrassment.
"How much chakra do you have to just force things instead of molding?" Shikazu raised his scarred eyebrow with intrigue.
"Um…too much, compared to most people. We Uzumaki are known for our massive chakra reserves." Kurama admitted sheepishly, because it was true on both counts.
"I see. I feel we need to focus on your control rather than the Jutsu in that case." Shikazu pointed to a tree. "You can tree-climb, right?"
"Don't children climb trees all the time?" At Kurama's innocent question, Shikazu laughed and she blushed at realizing what he meant. "Um, I haven't tried. I have always been able to leap straight up to my target without needing to climb or have footholds to spring off of."
"Ah, so the enigmatic Kurama-san has some gaps in her experience. Let me help you out. I'll go first." Shikazu put a foot on the tree, then casually began walking up.
"How does that work? Adhering to the surface on its own wouldn't be enough, not with how you're maintaining an upright walking posture." Kurama commented curiously.
"Ah, you noticed! It isn't just adhering to a surface, it is adhering you to it. The process involves a bit of self-hypnosis, which works even if you think it shouldn't, because you can clearly see it does. Anyway, by adhering yourself to a surface, you are also changing your gravity so long as you are in contact with it and your intent. It is also why water-walking works." Shikazu explained.
"Then I can also adhere things to me, such as kunai, rope or other objects." Kurama stated eagerly with a raised finger.
"That's right! This one technique is a foundation of how we ninja can perform superhuman feats and extrapolate further techniques. Now come on, give the tree-climb a try." Shikazu encouraged the redhead, who approached the tree and set foot on it.
The poor tree exploded.