Summary: A series of vignettes reimagining Kurama as a bratty, short fox-girl. Pretty simple stuff. [Fem Kyuubi]
Characters: Uzumaki Naruto, Kyuubi/Kurama, Team 7
1
Chance encounter
-Takes place in Chapter 95 of the manga/episode 56 of the anime-
With only twelve years of age, Naruto hadn't expected to die so early.
He was plummeting down into the ravine so quickly, and the light from the surface began to dwindle. What the hell was Pervy Sage's big idea with this? After knocking him out cold, he'd dragged him to these remote backwoods without any genuine explanation as to why, whatever easygoing disposition the older man had shown beforehand was replaced by a razor-sharp last chance out of nowhere.
"Get up." Naruto did so, laboriously in his movements, still feeling dazed from the near-complete depletion of most of his chakra reserves. "Your training ends today. If you value your life, you'll have to figure things out yourself, okay?"
Then, without giving him the time to regain his strength fully, he pushed him into the ravine's edge, right into the grasp of death. He did it with the flick of a finger - whether there was any form of chakra involved in the push he couldn't tell - and sent him flying backward away from the forest and right into the crevice: no wonder they call him legendary.
All he could was the obvious.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHH!" A long, prolonged shrill of horror and anger at himself escaped from his mouth - for not being able to live enough to fulfill his dreams. He'd die alone and forgotten in a dark place.
Until he noticed the spiky rock formations adorning the walls of the gorge - they were crags overhanging right there! If he couldn't grab onto them, he would be a dead man walking!
He infused both feet and hands with as much chakra as he could muster in those moments. As tired as he was, if he managed to grab at least one of those rocks, he could save himself, right?!
If only Naruto had known that those walls were polished smooth because of the pouring waters, and just how meager his chakra control in reality was, he would've realized sooner that he wouldn't be able to cling onto them.
So his hands slipped. All he accomplished was hit his back against another rock below it.
At this rate, I'm really gonna die!
He managed to steer clear of more crags. Death would be a lot more agonizing if he kept bumping on those things.
Gonna die.
He went rigid, his eyes wide and manic.
Gonna die.
He could hear his heart thumping in his ear. Louder than ever. A drum auguring death.
So he screwed his eyes shut. Maybe it was because, in the unmitigated throes of death, the darkness from his eyelids felt comforting in his final moments. Maybe it was because the flurries of wind lashing against his face started to sting his eyes.
But, suddenly, it all stopped.
There were no more winds, and he could feel a hard surface beneath him. He wasn't falling anymore, and most certainly he wasn't dead. At least not yet. So at least there was that.
His pants, from the knees down to the ankles, were soaked wet and his feet felt cold and damp too. There was water in that place; the whole place reeked of moist iron. Gallons of it. Had he fallen into a river of sorts?
No. Given how flat the surface beneath him was, a fall from that preposterous height would've left him as flat as a friggin' pancake of gore and bones. Certain death, yet he was there, in one piece.
The attempt to wrap his head around that made him dizzy. Was this heaven or something?
He had pulled some truly elaborate pranks like graffitiing the Hokage monument, sure, but he hadn't done anything truly heinous. So surely, at the very least, he could get eternal rest in paradise because he was a kid, right?
When he opened his eyes, he was greeted with a gloomy, metallic hall, with several doors on each side. It was imposing, with intricate ductwork padding its rusty walls and the ceiling. It resembled an archaic boiler room of sorts left to rot amidst the darkness and the gathering leaks of water. That godforsaken place almost had no lights at all seeping through its long decayed cracks: it was buried in deep, solid shapes of complete darkness.
Strangely enough, the place was ever so dimly lit by an eerie, amber hue, which Naruto couldn't fathom was even possible because, whatever the light source was, he was simply unable to locate it: there were no lamps at all in that place, not even candles. That entire location was lit by itself. The more he tried to reason with it, the more it confused him.
"Huh?" If this is how heaven looked like, it sure as well wasn't as comfortable as he'd imagined. To tell the truth, it was freaking him out quite a lot.
He was not about to entertain the idea of being in hell. They had to call it hell for a justifiable reason. Just as his life was turning out good with Team 7 and Iruka-sensei by his side, he was damned to hell?
If the universe was pulling a prank on him as karma, it was definitely not amusing.
"Am I-?"
"You're not dead, luckily for me, I guess."
Naruto's heart skipped a beat. He turned around, yelping helplessly in the water because that voice, soo deep and booming, startled him. He'd heard it right next to his ear as if someone had come to whisper to him, but there was no one next to him. The entire hall was just as empty as he'd found it.
Finally, he stood up, remaining in silence the entire while, trying to make sense of this whole ordeal. It was his attempt at looking tougher to whatever entity inhabited that space. The dripping from the pipeline filled the hollow space.
"Who's there…?" No answer came, Naruto's frown became more evident. "Where are you?"
"Follow the chill that runs down your spine."
Any courage he'd gathered had left him. Could the thing dwelling in the metallic building read his goddamn mind too?
Still, Naruto feared more how it would retaliate if he did not answer properly. So, after gulping in fear, he did as the voice told him: follow where his gut was telling him not to go.
This feeling, he propped a hand against the wall to his side, it's that chakra.
That red chakra . . . he spoke to Pervy Sage about that phenomenon. Whether anger overwhelmed him, or found himself in the mouth of death - two conditions were fulfilled on two different occasions: when Sasuke seemingly died against Haku and when that freakish Kusagakure shinobi was trying to eat him alive with her snake - he would completely black out for a moment, and the next thing he'd remember is a red chakra.
While he did not have a lot of recollections of the fight with Haku (probably for the better), he could recall some more details about his short-lived scuffle with the Kusagakure ninja.
The uncontrollable surge of strength.
The animalistic rage.
The desire to crush anything on his path.
While he came back to his senses - at least to some degree - when he saw Sasuke's frightened face, thinking back about that incident still troubled him. It was him all right, but at the same time, it felt like something else, much more dangerous and thirsty for murder, was in control. He was a puppet for something else's bloodlust.
Stuff like that can disturb someone in the long run.
He pressed forward nonetheless. Not just out of fear this time, but out of morbid curiosity. He knew the manifestation of that chakra wasn't just bred in his bone, he'd have the sneaking suspicion it belonged to something else. He wanted to know who or what was the holder of this chakra, despite everything else telling him to stay away.
That's when he saw its cage, and he shuddered like never before.
Many times had Naruto experienced true fear, like when he confronted Zabuza, and while the dread that seized him by the throat was similar, this time he felt it much more intensely.
The chakra was immense. It suffused the large, vacant hall in which he found himself, feeling like he'd just stepped into a furnace of sorts, or more accurately, a morgue's crematorium.
It hit him like an amalgam of sounds and scents, while comforting, it also seemed to try to lure him into a false sense of security.
The cage, however, was the most impressive thing in the entire place: a large strangely embellished door with large metal bars almost as thick as Naruto himself was. What seemed like a piece of worn-out parchment with the inscription of 'Seal' written on it stood in place of the lock.
He shuddered again, though he couldn't tell if it was because of the enormous jail or the water submerging his feet.
Then, he made out some movement amidst the encompassing darkness beyond the massive gateway. Something was in there.
"Ah!" Naruto shrieked as he fell on his back, into the water.
There was a spark of what seemed like light, and he finally could see the inhabitant of the massive jail.
He was taken aback, because he had expected a monster as massive as the enclosure itself, only to be met by a petite girl on the other side. What the hell was she doing in that colossal cage anyway?
Her hair was long, ridiculously long, longer than either Sakura or Ino before they cut it off. From what he could tell, it reached past her thighs.
Also, she had ears on her hair. Like those from a fox. Actual ears that flapped from time to time as if to show they weren't just some sort of accessory.
She was kneeling on the water while smoking a kiseru pipe. So that was the light in the darkness.
And that's when her eyes, rather large and bright red, almost hypnotizing in some disturbing way the boy couldn't even fathom, locked onto his. It almost seemed as if she knew more about him than he did himself.
She narrowed her eyes, in a strangely mischievous way, which didn't help the sinking feeling Naruto already had. She removed the pipe from her lips and breathed out a puff of nicotine.
"Hey, boy~ come here for a moment, will ya?" her voice was strangely bubbly and casual.
Perhaps it was the almost intoxicating cadence of her voice that, for whatever reason, compelled him to oblige. Naruto swallowed heavily; the shudder running down his spine seemingly faded away. The way her rosy, puckery lips smiled, and those damned deep red eyes beckoned to him. His sandals sloshed on the iron-plated floor, soaking him up to his ankles.
"Come, come. Don't be shy~" She held out both arms toward him, as to pull him into a hug. He couldn't shake it. Something about that woman was so bewitching.
He should have listened.
Her more or less benevolent expression warped into a ghoulish mockery of a sneer. Red bloodshot pupils shrank and the white sclera became as pitch-black as tar, morphing into a frenzied, crazed grimace.
A massive clawed, orange hand - about a hundred times larger than the girl, now replaced with a colossal four-legged beast - lunged at him and almost impaled his skull. The bars between them were the only thing that saved him.
Naruto whirled around wildly, helplessly screeching in his attempt, struggling to run: the water dipping around his ankles tried to pull him to the ground. In the grip of unbridled adrenaline, he barely managed to slip through those giant aquatic tentacles attempting to submerge him. He didn't even want to guess what would happen should he get close to that colossal monster.
That was definitely not a girl. It wasn't even anything remotely human. That thing was so large it could easily dwarf a fair chunk of a forest. He couldn't get a clear view of the creature's appearance - it was almost pitch black inside the cage now - but he caught a glimpse of the same red eyes that had almost succeeded in hypnotizing him a moment ago; however, they were no longer welcoming him with promises of comfort. Those were the eyes of a predator with its sights firmly set on its prey. If he didn't move away, he might as well be monster food.
Naruto continued to run and shriek, even after managing to make a good enough distance from the cage. Water pattered under his reckless footsteps, filling the metallic void. Eventually he bumped, and fell forward, catching himself with both hands as he struggled to catch his breath. His heart hammered in his chest from the harrowing experience, filling his ears with a buzzing hum that drowned out all other sounds. So much so that he didn't notice the footsteps sloshing behind him.
The monster melted away into the darkness behind the bars, and the girl reappeared. She slipped through the cage with relative ease and paused behind the boy with a casual sway of her hips. She cocked her head to one side for a moment, a curious bird-like motion, before grinning smugly; one of her fangs poked through her lower lip. Then she slammed a clawed bare foot into the boy's back.
Naruto choked back a grunt, raising his gaze towards her, and this time he was able to catch a proper glimpse of the girl, or whatever the hell was pretending to be a girl. Her hair was lengthy - ludicrously long, reaching even past her thighs - and of a rich hue of orange, perhaps the clearest color he'd ever seen across all that monochromatic hellscape, it somehow managed to stick out even in the faded gloom. Her bangs flowed blunt across her forehead in princess-like style, somewhat reminiscent of Hinata's, but her round face was framed by slightly more unkempt, but still straight locks. On the left side her hair fell straight, while on the other she had a sort of braid. Two bells with ribbons embellished the right side of her hair.
She donned a rather skimpy orange and brown yukata, with the coat drape exposing her shoulders, nearly showing off her rather flat chest, with a tight mini-skirt slipping over her plump legs, and a brown choker, decorated with a bell.
"Ah, jeez~" she grumbled, placing her hands on her hips, "You just had to go and fall so far away? I've been starving for a while and I thought you'd make for a good snack, but my powers are halved the more I stay away from that damned cage. It's a drag, don't you think?"
"Y-you!" Naruto's eyes widened. Protruding from her orange hair were two ears... animal ears!
Mizuki-sensei's sneering voice echoed in Naruto's mind, triggering the memory of events from the night he stole the scroll from the First Hokage. In other words, you're the Nine-Tailed Fox Demon that destroyed the village!
The kitsune arched an eyebrow. They resembled small orange ovals under her blunt bangs.
"Y-You're the Nine-Tailed fox, the Kyûbi, aren't you?"
The kitsune grinned boastfully, baring her fangs. Puffing out her chest proudly she exclaimed:
"Ahaha~ so you've heard the tales, boy, hmm? Indeed, I'm the powerful Kyûbi no Yôko." She raised a hand, placing it on her chest, in a somewhat dramatic fashion, "Capable of rising tidal waves or bringing down the earth with a single flip of my tails."
Her smile suddenly vanished, "And you…"
She drew her foot away from his back, allowing the boy to stand up. Upon doing so, Naruto noticed that the Kyûbi was shorter than he would have expected. A little shorter than he was, even.
"You shouldn't be here, at least not normally." Dropping both small hands to her sides, the loose sleeves of her yukata covered them completely. She looked down at him sidelong, like a despotic empress at a lowly footman. "What brings you here, boy?"
Naruto swallowed uneasily. What stood before him was without a shadow of a doubt the legendary Kyûbi; although it had taken on the guise of a young girl, the surrounding atmosphere was stifling. He wasn't a shinobi with any sensory skills: he couldn't feel chakra at all. But the Kyûbi's raw strength, while being restricted by standing far away from its cage, was overpowering. He almost perceived it as a solid object. All around him, the air took on a syrupy quality.
The kitsune seemed to pick up on his uneasiness. She giggled in delight at that, and it only exacerbated his unrest.
But that was not the time for flinching. He didn't have any idea how long he had spent out there, but if he didn't do something, he would surely be a dead man. His one remaining hope was that red chakra. The Kyûbi's chakra.
So Naruto flexed his fingers into a clenched fist. He tried to put on the most vicious of faces he could conjure up, but he failed to realize that although he intended to look intimidating, still some apprehension betrayed the sweat that beaded on his brow.
"Hey, brat!" he snarled at her, the girl glanced at him, more out of annoyance than any sort of dread. Naruto cracked a wide grin, one that attempted to look like a sneer of superiority. "Your short ass has been living in my body all this time, so how about you pay the rent already and lend me your chakra?"
The girl fell starkly silent. Her eyes, the brightest red Naruto had seen, bore into him, piercing his very soul. Naruto repressed a shiver, even as she stood there gazing at him in that vacant expression for moments at a time.
Then a dry chuckle escaped from her lips. She flashed her teeth, all of them looking sharper like a beast's teeth than those of a human.
And finally she erupted in arrogant laughter.
"HAHAHAHAHA! ARE YOU FOR REAL~?!" She glared at him, her eyes wild and manic. "DON'T MAKE ME LAUGH, BRAT~! DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA OF WHO YOU'RE CHALLENGING HERE?"
Now he was shaking with not just dread, but outrage. Naruto clenched his fist. Who did this shrimp think she was?
The Kyuubi stopped laughing, but her face remained as conceited as always.
"Oh ho~" she folded her arms, under her flat chest. "You look pretty angry, brat. Wanna kill me or something?"
"Well..." Naruto grinned, in an attempt at looking vicious, as he took a stance to try to take the kitsune on. "For one thing, it's your fault my life sucked so much. So, I think I want some payback for that. And your chakra seems like a good enough payment for all that! Even if I have to rough a girl like you a bit!"
Her smile widened, much broader than Naruto thought was anatomically plausible. The gleam vanished from her crimson eyes, turning completely glazed and somber.
The nine tails leaped up, whirling overhead, landing graciously above a metallic pillar beside Naruto. She straightened herself up, the baggy sleeves of her kimono flapping on the hot wind within the boiler room.
She smiled wickedly. "Trust me, kid. If you think your life was wretched, you haven't seen anything yet. Time flowing here is relative."
Naruto furrowed his brow in confusion.
She narrowed her eyes, giving a devilish grin. "I'm going to take my time to teach you a little discipline. Just try not to scream too much~"
"Yeah, right!"
"How about we spice this up a bit, kid?"
"Huh?"
"Let's wrap this up with taijutsu. A while has passed since I last stretched my legs, and I am in need of a little exercise. What do you say?" she said, flexing her shapely legs.
"Just try not to grit your teeth, brat!" Without a further word, Naruto rushed at her.
The Kitsune took on a fighting stance, her smile turning downright crazed. "Oh, believe me, I won't!" she spat.
She attempted to swing a straight right at him, but ended up hitting the empty air. Naruto got down before the blow could reach him.
"Trying to go for my feet, huh?"
Naruto just grinned. "You fell for it, dumbass!"
Leaning up from the ground, Naruto swung a kick at her head to stun her and finish her off. Unfortunately for him, the Kyûbi was more clever than he gave her credit for. All that had gone before had been out of pity.
She disappeared, and Naruto's kick ended up failing.
"Eh?"
Without noticing, the Kyûbi popped up behind Naruto.
"Boooooring~" she said in a lilting voice and making a foxy grin.
Then she landed a swift kick, and Naruto was sent flying into the water, crashing face-first into the metal floor and the water. He immediately lifted his head, drawing in a good breath of air.
"Damn it! I thought I got her," he grumbled.
He never noticed that the kitsune was plummeting toward his direction until her feet smashed into his back, plunging him fully into the water. Naruto ended up swallowing a good deal of that liquid that filled the place. It had an unpleasant metallic taste.
"Lame, so lame~" she spoke smugly, as she settled on his back as if it were a seat, crossing her legs and propping her arms on his back too. "That ought to teach you a little humility, boy. You should be a good dog and not challenge your mistress next time."
Naruto didn't speak, he simply made bubbles there. A sound that indicated annoyance.
"But I will admit that you have a point," she pouted her lips.
Naruto looked at her; annoyance lingered in his eyes, but there was also some curiosity.
"If you die, I will die. And that's a problem." She uncrossed her legs, "This wretched place is the last thing I wanna see before I die, you know?"
A small awkward silence ensued between the two.
"Do you have a name?" Naruto wondered. "Y'know, besides Kyûbi?"
She glanced down at him for a second with a raised eyebrow, looking interested for a moment, then she smiled arrogantly. "If I were to reveal my true name to you, you'd be too busy prostrating yourself to me to do anything."
Naruto clicked his tongue in frustration.
"Anyway, I've decided I'll help you out." Finally she pulled herself away, letting him stand up. "But don't you think I'll give you all of my chakra. I'll just give you the necessary so we won't die. You got that, brat?"
Naruto pouted grumpily.
"Yeah, whatever."
Her red eyes blazed with uncommon malice. "You'd better not address your mistress that way. You mustn't get the wrong idea. I'm not helping you because I do care about you. You and those sacks of flesh who you call friends are nothing more than nourishment for me. My only reason for cooperating with you is for my survival and because I need something to kill some time."
She passed by his side, leaning her face on his shoulder to whisper softly in his ear. Despite how horribly stifling the atmosphere had become, her scent was eerily pleasant. Like the aroma of white plum. Her half-moon smile concealed an unprecedented mercilessness. "Just remember, one day this cage will not restrain me. On that day I'll play rougher with you."
Suddenly, a dark substance began to surround Naruto along with the water. It surged up and began to swirl like a whirlpool of ink. Naruto jumped back as he felt it imprisoning his body, and constricting him as a snake does its prey. It was as if boiling water was enveloping him.
He heard the Kyûbi's mischievous laughter. "Nyahaha~ relax, I'm just giving you my chakra. I didn't tell you it'd be a pleasant experience."
Water turned a vivid shade of red. Wild, uncautious strokes made with black and red ink. Within a moment, they completely engulfed Naruto. And then, he vanished from the gloomy mindscape.
The Kyûbi laid both hands on her hips. "He's more fun that I expected~"
When Naruto came back to his senses, he continued to fall. It was as if nothing had really happened, but he felt a tremendous power surging through him. This was similar to the explosion of rage he felt at those critical moments.
He bit his thumb and performed the necessary seals. The summoning jutsu worked properly this time.
Following a busy afternoon, which he spent struggling to hang onto the back of a mountain-sized toad, when he woke up in a hospital bed a couple of days later - apparently, he ended up passing out from all the chakra he had burned away - Naruto decided that he wouldn't tell anyone about what he had gone through that time. He could deal with whatever was in his stomach one day.
It wasn't the very fact that a girl much shorter than him had kicked his ass very easily, but he believed that if anyone told him anything, that he was the Kyûbi, he would end up exposing a secret that should remain that - a secret. After all, Iruka-sensei said it was a decree.
There was one thing he knew very well, as did Kyûbi herself: this was not going to be their last encounter by any stretch of the imagination.
Within him, the kitsune giggled spitefully, awaiting her chance to take over his body.
Chapter I end
AN: So, basically, I've been drawing a lot of Kyuubi/Kurama genderbent lately, and I couldn't get these scenarios out of my head and I thought "I have to put this somewhere in some form" and fanfiction was probably the best alternative.
This isn't really a story perse. It's mostly taking scenes between Naruto and the Kyuubi from the original series and reimanining him as a short, bratty anime girl, sorta like Tatsumaki, hence why I said these are vignettes. I thought that'd be a refreshing take on the whole Fem Kyuubi concept.
That's basically the whole premise. There might be some changes, and also some side-stories, because I've also made fan-art of the Hachibi too.
Also some chapters might be longer than others, it really will depend.
This is my own way to also polish my english, so, anyway. Thanks for reading.