So writer's block fuckin sucks huh. Here I am restin up for a break from my story 'Savage maelstrom', getting slammed by trolls and negative reviews out of nowhere in private and such; so I decide to do some reading of other writing to try and bolster my motivation and boom, so many ideas… just none for the story I wanted them for. Of all of them, this one stuck out the most. The concept so interesting to me that I just HAD to try it out. So; Let's start with a more…. Interesting summery than the 384 character limit that ff allows me to put on the story. Shall we?
I do not own naruto or the other referenced franchises here.
Upon the night of October tenth, The birth of a hero was announced to the world amongst a sea of flames and the imprisonment of a being who's power quaked the earth and turned the eternal tides… All thanks to the actions of one man. One man, who split the nature of the being's soul in a gamble with death… But like any gamble upon the world, there is always the choice. The one fate turns in her ever-moving grasp…
On one side of the dice, the boy would become a host
On one other, perhaps the birth led to two or three lives to carry the burden where the boy would become a monster of abuse or neglect.
In some cases, the attack never happened at all.
But this… this quiet night, beset upon by fire and destruction; something else rolled the dice in different direction… a guiding hand from another time, A hand of wisdom and pains unknown… A hand that was… well. It is not of mortal right to know the whims of those beyond, but the hand that delt this dice was not that of fate. Not that of the beings that deign upon the paths of life and death as they string out upon the world….
No…
For this hand had a plan. This hand, had its own path to write… to guide…
For there was not one man upon this night of sealing, but two. One seen, one hidden to the corpse of the mother and the bleary eyes of the father.
But not to the eyes of the beast.
Eyes… full of shame… and full of fear
For Ringed gaze watched in disappointment; and moved… as ink turned, Seals rewound upon skin…
And the death god Bellowed upon the loss of a soul…
And for the first time
The beast… drew air in lungs that belonged not to him.
"Damned Fool…". Within a cell of stone and iron; beset on all sides by seals that glowed with an ever present crimson air to them, Eyes of a brighter ruby watched the passing shadows beyond his cell with a look that promised death and promised pain of even greater amounts. The Being's gaze held nothing but wrathful intent for his imprisonment; this body held up so… pathetically, within the confines of this damnable cell.
And the damned Crying! The disgusting writhing mass of pink and blonde that DARED mock him with its disgusting existence! If only his form was not so limited, he would crush it and this village to the soil it dared to raise out of… but no. here he was. Bound in iron and these seals. The door opening drew his attention up towards the light that blinded him so; but he heard it, the steps of a wizened body as bones creaked and a cane tapped the floor amidst the crying that mocked him so much.
"Raise your head, Beast". Heh… Puny human. What did he think that he was going to be able to do to one such as him, even if he was bound to this fleshy body-PAIN. The seals lighting up as raw lighting fried his form, causing his voice to bellow out- mixed with that damned man's voice, his skin smoking when the pain faded… barely taking notice of how the boy screamed in fear. Good. He should fear him. but alas, he looked up; eyes locked onto those of the man who had stuck him in this cell in the first place.
This, Third hokage, Held no candle to the men such as Hashirama Senju or Madara Uchiha in his opinion, the only one that mattered really. Where they had had the grace to de young on the battlefield, this man led from behind an oaken desk with a soft voice and a hand that lacked none of the iron his teachers held. Oh the brat he was in before knew this well, the things she got away with being laughable whereas the first host had been restricted in so many ways to hold him back, To control him….
"I understand you refuse to talk. A shame, Such an opportunity hasn't been shown to us in quite some time… Why will you not converse with us Nine tails, did the fact you destroyed so many lives this night not earn us your common manners?". And there it was. 4 times the man had come to him, sometimes with guards, sometimes with that girl in the trench coat; The pains this body could feel were abnormal for something like him…
He just spat, his dry mouth already screaming at the lack of moisture that it's previously dying form was lacking in such great amounts. As the old man wiped it from his shoe upon the wall, he gazed upon the bundle in the elder's arms with raw hatred. Why? The boy had stopped crying and looked at him in want… "Take the spawn away and we shall talk, Ningen".
But the elder did not. He actually pulled up a stool and sat down, the arrogant bastard of a man. "I don't think I will, After all you happen to stand in the place of someone this child needs dearly… and unfortunately he is as hated as you are for what part of you he contains, so leaving him with another is… unlikely.".
Blasted Jinchuriiki. The sin that proved his father's words null and void about this understanding foolishness. The seal that lay upon the boy, lay upon him too; the Lad's left eye shining with the seal that BURNED upon his stomach. "What. DO. YOU. WANT!?". The voice carried far, and yet the boy did not cry… shame, that had been his goal. The old man however, just sighed…
"Why did you attack". Why, why why why, why always that question, did he need an answer? Really? Did he have to request it so plainly in that simple way… Kurama, Nine tailed beast reduced to this, An Inquiry to mortal minds. Fine. "Your own kind lie to you old man… that damnable eye you worship so much is the cause of my being here, the cause of your deaths and the blood that stained my teeth. I wanted REST; But NO, YOU AND YOURS ARE THE FUCKING REASON I EXIST AS I AM. WHY, COULD YOU NOT LEAVE WELL ENOUGH ALONE!?".
Ok, perhaps he had said a bit too much. But after… the later half of one lifetime and another bound inside seals with no one to hear his words, could he be blamed for his outburst? No, but that did not mean he would accept the look of pity… "You were controlled…?". The fox turned his head, not willing to say much else. And in return, he saw his face in the pool of blood they had extracted from him… Blonde hair, turned red. His once beautiful tails gone, a body that lacked any of its musculature or form due to the draining of its life from the Shinigami, stood where his mighty frame should have. Minato….
What… had that old man done to him.
"You reside in the body of a man that was stabbed through the stomach, a body that was healed miraculously in moments; in a seal with no gate. Your power however, lies in the boy… What happened, Nine tails. Perhaps we can make your stay more hospitable, if what you just said is in fact true". Hospitable… this Human Body did hurt so, and he felt hungry… rather hungry.
But he had his pride. And his pride would never back down to a mortal. So when silence stood, the elder sighed and stepped off his stool; walking out of the room in silence as the door was bolted shut once more; though that was not the sound he focused on.
It was the cries…
The boy's cries…
"Father… Why…."
~{TSTS}~
Days passed for Kurama, Locked inside the meager cell that stood as his prison as he got weaker and weaker from thirst and hunger; his own fault due to how he had attempted to bite the hand off of the shinobi that had been in charge of feeding him while in said cell, not that he would ever admit to being the cause of his mistreatment at these shinobi.
And that man had come. Every time, every day, he felt it with the seal as he brought the child… sometimes leaving them outside, sometimes bringing them in, mockingly stating how the boy always seemed to be looking in the cell's direction whenever the boy stopped crying. It sickened him… He was not the boy's father. And every time, the same question was asked.
Will you converse with us yet?
The unspoken question of if he had had enough of this… isolation, was clear but the man did not know that the fox enjoyed this isolation. He did not enjoy however how much the body he inhabited had changed… Angular features had angled even further, Red eyes narrowing, his entire body becoming further and further… foxlike; though his fur and features still remained locked away from him. The Nine tails, Kurama, was becoming accustomed to the body; or was it accustomed to him. he did not know. And he hated it.
As the door began to open again, This time it was not to his usual visitor but… he blinked. He blinked twice, he blinked thrice and then he yanked against the chains in anger. The boy was held with a knife to his neck, this maddened shinobi he saw before him one of the mindless peons; he remembered… this one had been with a woman, his claw turning her to paste and sending him flying.
"H-haha, I can't believe the rumors were true! The fox, in the body of the fourth! And so helpless…". This damn human was mocking him, laughing as he pulled against the chains that bound him. but he saw outside… no guards. Not even their scent. The Man's eyes held madness in them, the sleeping child not even aware of death from a sharpened edge, hanging less than half a foot away from him. why did he CARE so much!? No…
No…
He saw it
There was a thin line of blood coming from the boy's neck. A tiny cut, barely anything, but he saw it and… there was so… much… ANGER, in the veins of this body. Did part of the boy's father still exist within him? was it protectiveness over the power that was stored inside the newborn?
It mattered not.
The boy wasn't asleep, no, He was…cowering. Eyes screwed shut, tiny whimpers of fear coming from them and it hurt Kurama to hear it. It ached, it stung, it brought a fire unknown to the beast.
What kind of monster would hurt a child!?
His eyes went to the seal to his left, something left in 'kindness' by the third to provide him with a way to speak to the old man should he decide that his silence was not worth the hunger. But that would take minutes, minutes he did not have. So even as he purposefully ran his thumb over it, nicking it on a sharp bit of the chain that held him to act as the conduit to activate the seal, his mind was going through a thousand thoughts a moment
The cries of the boy, Naruto, drew his attention as this monster dragged his blade up to the newborn's eye, the boy squirming and crying as his thumb peeled back the eyelid.
He was going to-!
"How about you stop being such a weak shit and take your anger out on the real cause. Who was she… Your wife? Your sister? Who did I turn into a stain on the soil next to your fragile body?". He could have told himself to shut up, but the sight of the man stopping was enough… he turned… slowly, kunai dropping as he placed the boy down. Madness had turned to hate, hate for him, and he knew it.
He only had to endure for a few minutes….
A few minutes of whatever this ningen had in store for him.
The man knelt slowly in front of him, tip of the blade pointed under the fox-no… His eye, the body's eye. "How dare you… My Jewel was everything to me, and you took her in the flash of moment. You don't get to talk about her like that!". There, the flash of red, Uchiha. Oh, the fox would have fun with this, no matter the pain.
"Heh.. Hahaha… HAHAHAHA… oh this is rich, This is perfect. An Uchiha? Tell me, did you notice the pattern Boy, the design upon my eyes when I flattened the bitch?". Confusion covered the man's eyes, as if searching his memories for something, anything that could have linked to the beast's words. The fact they came from a face that resembled his idol meant nothing, this was the beast and even though the question was genuine, he doubted it… "The hell do you mean, fox". The beast In flesh smirked, leaning forward against his chains. They wanted him to talk?
Fine
He would talk…
"Did you know the price of pregnancy to a female host, Uchiha? Their seal becomes weak under the strain, under the stress of giving birth. The Man I consumed to take his place knew this and yet he shot his seed into the womb of my host… I would have been free to leave, to roam, to sleep in my own land once more without you and your kind, and no… I do not mean Humans, but YOU, UCHIHA… think, look back to that night, to your horrors and your deepest nightmares… LOOK, AT MY EYES!".
The man stumbled back at the bellowing voice, a voice that did much to cover the approaching sounds of footsteps as he gazed into the depths of his memories with a racing heart. The fox had to be lying, that's what they do, they were tricksters!
But no… he saw it. He saw them. Three Tomoe; spinning in the fox's eyes… Sharingan.
"N-no…". the chuckle of the fox was clear. "Ah, but yes, what else. Your Senju are reduced to a sniveling runaway and none other can control me like those eyes… one of your own kind RIPPED ME from the seal of the boy's mother and bound me to attack your village. A traitor amongst your kind Sent me upon you like a curse, a curse I cannot escape. Imprisoned once again because your blood saw me as a weapon… How does it feel Uchiha, that your clansman is the one who caused me to rampage. To kill. To maim, to slaughter…. To crush your jewel into the soil your kind crawled from… and orphaned your hero's Child".
Wide eyes turned to the fourth's heir, any words silenced by the sudden insertion of steel into the man's neck as his leader stood in front of him, a masked being to his left.. sword held outright. No words were given as the man was pulled from the cell in his dying moments; Kurama almost sad he could not witness the cause for those wet sounds of fleshy separation. Instead he turned his head to the old man, who's gaze asked it all.
"Was what you said true…?".
Kurama just stared… before sighing. "Every word… the boy… is he ok?". The elder raised an eyebrow at the concern in the fox's voice, reaching down to pick up the bundled wrap with a smile to see the cut had already healed up. "He will be… What now. I do believe I told you that honesty could get you some hospitality but this revelation is… it will take some time to prove to the others that you speak the truth". The fox knew this. his eyes darting around the room as he tried to think, think… think… a word coming to mind.
"Yamanaka". The third's eyebrow raised, holding the child closer to him. "You would consent to a mind search?". Ok, no he wouldn't. but perhaps that was the only way to go. But it would go under his terms. "Only what I wish to show. I possess secrets that I wish for none other to learn, And I will request that they be mine and mine alone… Otherwise I shall crush the mind that enters mine. Is this understood?". Hiruzen nodded and snapped his fingers. The seals faded to ink, the chains coming loose from him and his strength… did not return.
The third chuckled as he watched the kyuubi, no… this… new, person struggle to stand on two feet, most likely without tails to balance them. "Most humans need to eat to regain their strength Kyuubi-san. You haven't eaten or drank anything for a few days, So let's make that the first stop". The man nodded, looking at the elder as he was offered the arm of an anbu… the temptation to bite or tear it off was smothered as he was helped to walk out of the cell.
"Fine, Anything Red and bloody… and also… My name is not Kyuubi".
He looked at the eyes that gazed at him, confusion and curiosity across them as he sighed…
"Then what should we call you, Kyuubi-san?".
A moment passed… His image flashing into Kurama's mind.
"Father.."
"Call me… Kurama Otsutsuki"