The Wrath and Redemption of the Kyuubi no Kitsune V2.0
By: EDelta88
Rated M for language violence and my own paranoia
[Insert Disclaimer Here]
Background and Beginning Notes:
Back by popular demand we have an expanded, updated, and edited version of WRKK. In addition to general proofreading I have added an additional chapter and a glimpse into the future as well as an omake prompted by my good friend Jostanos.
Now, for this version I added a year system. A.S. [After Sage] is my timeframe for the story. 0 being either the defeat of the Juubi or the death of the Rokudo Sennin, 1000 A.S. being the founding of Konoha, 1100 A.S. being the year Naruto was born and going from there.
Prologue
It was over...
After everything they had been through, everything they had striven for, it was all coming to an end. They had fought for so long. They had come so far. They had been so close!
So very close...
But, in the end, close had not been close enough. Naruto's training had been far too little. Their new found partnership had come too late. Their enemies had been far too prepared. They had fought... and they had lost.
Their luck had finally run out.
The ritual was beginning now. He could feel it. The pull on his chakra as that accursed statue started to consume him. Like... as if he were being crushed at the bottom of the ocean while being slowly ripped apart. They were taking him away... away from the world the Sage had left him to and back to that thing he had been before, away from himself... away from her. They would take him away and Naruto would die. They were going to kill his friend.
This was... unacceptable.
They could take him back. They could recreate the Juubi. They could cast their stupid illusion. They could raze the world to ash and cinder. What did he care? They could take everything else, anything else, but they could not have her! They would not take the only human he had ever given a damn about! He would not allow it!
And so he fought. For the only person he had cared about since the days of his creation, Kurama fought like he had never fought before.
But it wasn't enough.
He was Kurama, the Kyuubi no Kitsune, first born of the Tailed Beasts, the favored child of the Sage of Six Paths. He had over a thousand years of experience and near limitless power. He was one of the most dangerous beings ever to walk the face of the planet! But it wasn't enough! That damnable statue was winning. Madara was winning.
And it infuriated him...
In the confines of his container's mind Kurama thrashed, roared, and struggled against the inevitable. Enraged by his own weakness. This fight was over and he knew it. It had been lost long ago. Long before the little shinobi had united. Long before Naruto had faced Pain. Long before that insolent brat had first come to him and demanded power. He couldn't win. Not here. Not now.
But it was not over... not if Kurama had something to say about it. It would not end like this.
He had come too far, gained too much, for it to end like this!
Kurama grit his teeth, pulling with every fiber of his being and, just for a moment, managed to halt Madara's ritual.
He would not allow it to end like this!
So, with a final roar of defiance, Kurama turned the full might of his being on the space in front of him, pushing, tearing, willing the universe to bend to his will, and thrust his claws forward into reality itself...
And brought existence as he knew it to an end.
"When you fight to protect those who are precious to you… that is when you become truly strong." -Yuuki Haku
Chapter 1: Kurama's Wrath
Konoha, October 1100 A.S.
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 louder 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 a resounding crash.
'Wait... trees!' His eyes going wide, Kurama leapt to his feet, his eyes swivelling 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 Fire Country, somewhere just east of Konoha and he could feel...
'Fear...' he thought, his eyes fixing on a point in 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 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 hand. 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 snare 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 one 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 as 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 counterpart 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 battle 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 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 while, he continued to circle, stepping carefully as he continued to watch the puppet bat away the incoming missiles like annoying flies. 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 every 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 ANBU 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 then 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...'
Chapter 2: Kurama's Redemption
Fire Coutry, October 1100 A.S.
'Where are you...' Kurama wondered, his eyes searching the ground as he strained his senses to find Naruto's chakra in the jumbled mass of energies that surrounded his container's village.
Curses, where had that blonde rat stashed his wife and daughter? And why did the cheap imitations of his father have to surround their villages with so many pesky chakra fields? And why did human spawn have to have such weak chakra? This would be so much easier if his container was older and already a shining beacon of life energy like her mother had been!
Wait...
'If Naruto ever finds out about this she will never let me hear the end of it,' Kurama thought, his ears drooping sheepishly as he started searching for Kushina's chakra. Not a moment later, he found her. 'Ah, there you...' he thought, a relieved grin working its way across his jowls only to suddenly turn to a frown, his hackles rising in alarm. Then he was rushing north.
Something was wrong.
Kushina... she was a jumbled mess of some of the most negative emotions he had ever felt. Fear, panic, helplessness, anguish... and all of them were crushingly powerful. He had never felt such turmoil in her emotions, not even when she had been taken by the storm ninja as breeding stock.
Something was very, very, wrong.
A strange urgency overtook Kurama as he willed himself to move faster… he barely even noticed how his body dematerialized, becoming an aetherial stream of fire-like chakra that swept over the landscape with incredible speed but leaving no sign or warning of its passing.
The next thing he knew he was solid again, standing above an unassuming cottage where he could feel his containers' chakras. Not wasting a moment Kurama crouched down to stare into the shelter. Then his eyes went wide, his body going rigid in shock. He could see Kushina, tears rolling freely down her cheeks as she held a little blonde child, rhythmically pressing three fingers into the infant's chest just above the heart.
Naruto wasn't breathing.
"Please... please breath," Kushina begged as she tried to revive her daughter.
'No...' Kurama thought, a strange numbness spreading through his body as he stared down at the still form of the child that should have been his living container. This wasn't right. This wasn't what was supposed to happen. What had happened? What had gone wrong?
"Please, don't do this to me Naru-chan. Please breath. Please!" Kushina sobbed, completely ignorant of her surroundings as she cradled the unresponsive infant to her chest.
Meanwhile...
A short distance away, Hiruzen and his squad of Anbu lurked out of sight, baffled by the Kyuubi's behavior.
"Hizashi?" Sarutobi asked commandingly as they watched it lying on its stomach, staring at something out of sight. Normally he would have had a sealing team ready and already in the process of putting the Kyuubi back in its cage. After all, he had lived through Madara's attacks as well as a time when the beast was still roaming free. But something was different now, never in his life had he heard of such behavior in a biju, let alone the violent Kyuubi no Yoko. He was… curious.
"Sir," the hawk masked Anbu acknowledged, his byakugan flaring to life behind his mask. "What in the world..." he muttered in confusion.
"Report!" Sarutobi demanded, suddenly all business.
"Sir, there's a shelter on the far side, Kushina-sama is inside holding what appears to be a stillborn infant," the Hawk masked captain explained. "The Kyuubi appears to be observing them and…uh, sir?"
"What is it Captain?" Sarutobi asked, made curious once more by the uncertainty in his subordinate's voice.
"Can… can a biju cry?"
It was strange, Kurama decided as a single tear slipped unnoticed into the fur of his muzzle as he continued to stare into the shelter. He could feel that Naruto's body was alive, healthy even. Not as scratch on her. Even her chakra was-
'Wait...' Suddenly, Kurama's eyes narrowed to slits.
Dead bodies didn't have chakra.
But Naruto, despite her appearance still had chakra. It was still there. He could feel it. But… Her chakra was wrong. Something was... 'Her Yin is missing?' he wondered, bewildered. Not suppressed or weak like was common in newborns but gone? 'For it to be completely gone her soul would also have to be gone,' Kurama reasoned, the cogs in his head spinning furiously as he tried to figure out what had happened.
Nothing had happened to Naruto in the previous set of events until her father had transported him to this location. Even then she had been completely uninjured through the entire process. In fact, from a certain point of view the sealing had left her more healthy and robust than she had been to begin with.
So what had happened? What could have happened? What was different?
Kurama's ears twitched in irritation, sending gust of wind through his fur. The answer to his last question was obvious enough.
He was different…
But how would him coming back caused this? Was it some consequence of what he'd done? Was it some side effect of a temporal disturbance? Could it have something to do with his battle with the husk of his former self? Could the power output from their attacks have…
Kurama's thoughts trailed off as something occurred to him.
His past self had been missing its soul when he arrived… completely devoid of the Yin side of his chakra but Kurama had still possessed that part of himself.
Why?
All the while Kurama's eyes never left Naruto's form as his mind worked furiously to solve the problem.
This was something to do with him.
He had changed something.
When he had come back, he had…
Kurama blinked, his mind grinding to a halt as it seized on that thought. He had come back and the younger him had been soulless, supplanted by…
So it wasn't something to do with him per se… it had do with Naruto.
His Naruto.
Instantly, Kurama's mind was racing again. If he was right, that would mean that his Naruto was here, now, somewhere. Her soul, more powerful and dominant with age and maturity was here in their past usurping her former self. But how had she come back? She had been on death's door, there was no way she could have sent herself back. That would mean that she came back with him. That he brought her back. But he hadn't meant to so that would mean that it was an accident. So if neither of them had done it then how was she...
Kurama cocked his head ever so slightly as his eyes drifted to the barely visible, unblemished, skin of baby Naruto's stomach.
'The seal… Could it really be that simple?' he wondered as he turned his senses inward, feeling, searching… and he smiled, his body sagging in relief.
It was a testament to her grief that Kushina had not noticed Kurama's presence until the very tip of Kurama's massive claw was right in front of her, ever so gently resting on her child's belly. Then in an enormous rush of chakra, Kurama was gone.
And Naruto began to cry.
Konoha, 14 Years Later…
"Hokage-sama! Hokage-sama!" an aide shouted, rushing into Minato's office.
The Yondaime groaned in resignation, dropping his face into his hands. He knew that tone. That whiny, slightly panicked, tone that lacked the fear or urgency of an actual emergency. It was a tone that the young Hokage was intimately familiar with. It was the tone his brown nosing underlings always used when…
"My lord!" the toady cried, snapping to attention and giving a salute. "Your daughter has defaced the Hokage Monument, sir!"
Minato parted his fingers ever so slightly, starting at his aide as he blinked very, very slowly. Then he dropped his hands, turning to the side to stare out the window at said monument. As his aide said, it was covered with graffiti… and what appeared to be giant glasses and a mustache on his face… and an enlarged version of Icha Icha propped up in front of the Sandaime's… the Nidaime's likeness had somehow acquired a chibi body and a riding crop… and Hashirama-sama appeared to be kissing a monument sized likeness of Uchiha Madara.
None of this had been there two and a half hours ago when he had come into work…
Minato turned back to his subordinate. "When was this discovered?" he inquired with a deceptively calm voice.
"About thirty minutes ago, sir."
"I assume she was wearing her usual outfit?"
"I believe so, yes."
"You believe so?" Minato quoted.
"No one has actually seen her, sir."
"Oh, alright then," Minato replied with an airy tone, as if this perfectly explained everything. "Has she been apprehended yet?"
"The patrols have been attempting to locate her since we discovered the crime, sir."
"So, just to clarify, you are telling me that in the space of two hours my daughter, my teenage daughter, did that?" Minato asked, his tone deliberately even and controlled.
"Yes sir."
"In broad daylight…"
"Yes sir."
"Wearing hunters' orange…"
"We believe so, yes."
"And that she went completely undetected while drastically altering the state of the most visible landmark in the village…"
"Yes sir."
"And has since remained undetected for the last half hour in a village of highly trained ninja that is actively looking for her?"
"Yes sir," the aide replied, sounding please with himself for some reason that Minato could not fathom.
Minato palmed his face and sighed again. 'I am surrounded by idiots…' he thought exasperatedly. "Contact Sarutobi-dono, tell him that he is in charge until I get back," he ordered as he activated the seal that would secure the room until his predecessor arrived.
The brown noser gave a startled yelp as the barrier flung him bodily from the room and slammed the doors behind me.
Massaging his temples, Minato closed his eyes searching for the Hiraishin Shiki he had placed on his daughter for just such an occasion. "There you are…" he muttered, his eyes snapping open. Then, with barely a thought, he vanished into Hiraishin making a grab at the space where he could feel his wayward daughter as he came out of the technique…
Only to grasp air as Naruto hurled herself out of the way, blowing a raspberry at him as she freefell off the Hokage Tower.
"God damn that girl makes me proud…" Minato whispered to himself as he watched his daughter bounce off the outer wall of the tower and practically fly over the rooftops as she cackled like a maniac.
The chase was on…
Omake: Temper Tantrum
By: EDelta88
Inspired and partially written by Jostanos
A certain 'undead' Uchiha saw what happened and was stunned, stymied, and FURIOUS!
"Where did that other Kyuubi come from? And why did he take my pawn?" Tobi
ranted before he added, "And where the fuck did it go?! If I'm ever able to find him I'll... I SHALL BEND HIM TO MY WILL AND FORCE HIM TO DESTROY KONOHAGAKURE! MWAHAHAHAHAHA!"
Snap!
"Huh?" our demented Uchiha wondered. Finally noticing the nice ANBU (one in particular tossing away a suspiciously broken stick) surrounding him the Uchiha sheepishly grinned beneath his mask and rubbed the back of his neck."Did I just say that out loud?"
The surrounding ninja nod in ominous unison.
For a moment the masked shinobi said nothing, staring back at them. "Um...Ooops?" he said, lamely shrugging his shoulders.
The nice ANBU draw various weapons and start performing various handseals.
The certain undead Uchiha waves to the nice ANBU before turning and sprinting in the opposite direction. "Toodles!"
A/N
Well, there you go, I hope you all enjoyed the update and took away a sense that your input does carry weight (because it really does) with how I choose to do things.
Now, for a rant inspired by an asshat from last chp... ahem:
To the "Guest" who decided to rain on my parade and call my FemNaru stories Closet Yaoi. Fuck you, you spineless scum sucker. If you are going to flame because you don't like how I write MY stories you could at least have enough pride in your opinion to do it under your own name.
To the rest of you, I gift you my explanation on why I write so many "FemNaru" stories.
Firstly, I'm not a fan of Yaoi. In fact, most of it annoys the hell out of me because it is half-assed crap written by horny schoolgirls. That said, I don't mind reading a GuyxGuy/GirlxxGirl fic if it significantly well done but seeing as I am of the heterosexual persuasion I generally miss those fics because I'm simply not looking for those pairings. Yes, I tend to pair FemNaru with Sasuke. Why? Well it's not because I secretly think Naruto and Sasuke should be bumping uglies in canon. I don't swing that way and my girlfriend will back me up on that. No, I have a tendency to pair FemNaru with Sasuke because he's the only boy I deem potentially epic enough to be in any way worthy of her. Have you ever tried dating someone that is in some way drastically superior/inferior to you? It's hard and, in my experience, doesn't end well. Sasuke is the most readily available boy with the strength and intelligence to be her equal.
Secondly, I prefer female protagonists. They are, in my opinion, more interesting both to read and to write due to the differences in how girls (in general) think and process situations compared to guys. This makes for more… interesting interactions seeing as I tend prefer actual thought provoking drama to the anime model of "Run into fight, get shit knocked out of you, proceed with: A) bulldoze through force of will B) train and come back C) unlock new power level mid-fight, overcome the foe, rinse and repeat."
Thirdly, what I refer to as "FemNaru" isn't actually Naruto at all. It/She/They are female protagonists that I have created to fill the position that "Naruto" previously occupied in the canon storyline. They are not a Naruto that got stuck in Oiroke no Jutsu. They are not victims of Orochimaru's mad experiments to somehow fuse the Uzumaki bloodline with [Insert second whatever here]. They are not warped through some kind of time and space bullshit that I do not care to define at this time. They are characters I created based on the idea of Kushina popping out a beautiful baby girl because it suits the story I am trying to create and are shaped by the events that I put them through.
Lastly… I'm an originality snob. I loathe the idea of simply rewriting a story that someone else has already done (ironic, I know) and, if it is ground already trodden, I do my level best to spin it in a new direction and make it my own. Naruto of the Nine Tails was the first of its kind and still is one of the only ones. I like FemNaru stories because it is a largely untapped field of Naruto FanFiction. Are there lots of FemNaru stories? Yes. But the grand majority of them are depressingly similar. In fact, I started Wrath of a Woman Scorned in a fit of spite for the "Bubbly Blonde Bimbo" FemNaru stories. I was so sick of reading the slightly different versions of the same loves-everybody, sugar sweet, hugs and kisses, giggles and eyelashes Narukos that had all the depth of a teacup that I set out to create the most dark and creepy FemNaru I could possibly think of… and according to most of you who read it I have succeeded.
Now, if after this monologue you cannot or choose not to differentiate between what Kishimoto presented in canon and what I choose to write using the Narutoverse as a basic mold I invite you to search elsewhere within fanfiction for something that better fits your tastes rather than wasting your time and mine reading a genre that you clearly do not appreciate. I would also urge you to reexamine the definition of FanFiction as you seem to have misunderstood certain parts of its basic makeup.
Mildly irritated,
Delta