Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Masashi Kishimoto and Natsume Yūjin-chō belongs to Yuki Midorikawa. I own nothing but this fanfic.

Chapter 2

Madara was furious. He felt like he was being played. Deceived. How dare that lowly yōkai scam him, luring him into a trap known as the red-haired woman who had the kyūbi sealed inside her?! Did that puny little creature who was only a little bigger than his cat form want him to be sealed as well? The maneki-neko sprinted back to Forest of Death, threatening the lower yōkai with a painful death, only stopping when the said yōkai begged for mercy pitifully and explained everything.

"I truly didn't mean anything bad, ninneko-san!" she bowed deeply after giving him an explanation. Filled with fear and trepidation, she explained one more time. "You—you asked me if I knew where to find the kyūbi… and I just—I just told you that. You will find him in Ichiraku… because his jinchūriki goes there often. I might have forgotten to inform you—no, I simply never thought it was important! Everyone knows the kyūbi is sealed in a jinchūriki. It's been decades. I-I thought you knew…"

Madara sighed. How could he still blame this lowly yōkai when the crux of the problem was a misunderstanding between them? Apparently, it was not a secret in yōkai society that the kyūbi no yōko had been sealed inside humans—jinchūriki, she said—for decades. She assumed he too already knew this, so without detailed information, she sent him to where the jinchūriki was.

"Really, ninneko-san, I wouldn't dream of harming you when you've done nothing wrong to me! A-and… they wouldn't seal a ninneko like you with no reason…" the yōkai stammered again nervously. "S-so… please have mercy on me…"

That piqued his interest. Come to think of it, this lowly yōkai always addressed him as ninneko-san. Ninneko, as in ninja cat? Why was that? And why wouldn't they seal a ninneko?

"You—you are a ninneko, aren't you?" The yōkai was half confused-half scared when Madara asked. "I mean, you are a cat that can speak. Right?"

"And why won't they seal me?" he ignored her bewildered expression, pressing for the second question.

"Shinobi don't seal a ninneko without a reason," she repeated the statement she had said before. "Ninneko are usually shinobi's allies. It isn't so uncommon for ninneko or ninken to loiter around in Konoha."

"I see," Madara sat on, finally feeling relaxed after the misunderstanding was cleared up. "Can all ninneko see your kind?"

"No. Only a few," she replied.

"So, all ninneko can speak?"

"N-no. Some can. Some cannot," she answered carefully, still looking bewildered. "Umm… it's also like that for ninken."

Ninken she said. So there were ninja dogs as well. "Where can I find them?"

That was how Madara found himself on a new mission: to see ninneko and ninken of Konoha.

The lower yōkai told him that ninneko could be found in the Uchiha Compound and ninken could be found in the Inuzuka Compound. She also said that ninneko was a rare sight in Konoha, unlike ninken, and if he really wished to meet one, perhaps he would find a better chance in a city called Sora-ku.

True to her words, the Inuzuka breed many ninken for their clan. Ninken, as it turned out, was different from normal dogs. They were smarter and could live longer; Madara had seen one whose age was over thirty. As a fellow canine, Madara did not have any difficulties understanding their woofs and barks. They seemed to be happy with their life, which meant the Inuzuka were capable of raising and keeping them. It was a shame he did not find any among them who can talk like humans.

Madara did not have high expectations when he sneaked into the Uchiha Compound. After all, he was told that ninneko was a rare sight in the village, and true to her words again, he could not find a single ninneko although there were a few cats in the compound. Still, this place intrigued him. The Uchiha Compound was like a village inside a village. They had their own market to meet their daily needs. They also had a clinic to treat the ill and wounded. It was a self-sufficient clan, unlike other clans in Konoha who depended on each other.

Why the difference, he wondered, but not for long because human's affairs were not his problem. After enjoying some petting and a whole chicken thigh from a kind-hearted Uchiha, Madara continued wandering around the village until he was satisfied before heading to Sora-ku.

The journey to Sora-ku left him with a strong impression. While he was in no hurry, Madara missed flying in the sky, so one time, when he was far from humans' territory, he returned to his wolf form and went up to the sky, admiring and observing the new landscape he had never seen before. He never expected people could see him from below, screaming in both horror and awe loud enough he could hear them from the sky. In the end, before he made more commotion, Madara descended and turned back to his cat form secretly.

After what seemed to be weeks (he must have had lost his way, but that was fine because he met more people and lower yōkai, being fed by humans and entertained and informed by his own kind), finally, he arrived at Sora-ku. It was a modern city with tall buildings, yet seemingly abandoned by humans. Instead of meeting more people and more food, he found many yōkai haunting the city, taking the abandoned buildings as their home. From them, he got to know how the once prosperous area became a ghost city: shinobi wars. The yōkai also told him where to find the ninneko.

Madara was careful when he sneaked into the ninneko territory. He was no ninja, so even if he was able to fight them, he would not be able to hide his identity if it ever came to that. He could not pretend to be a wild cat either, seeing his body was round and well groomed, not to mention the collar with a bell around his neck, totally screaming that he was a domesticated and owned cat. In the end, Madara chose to pretend to be an ordinary noble cat looking for a way home.

As he treaded carefully in the ninneko territory, Madara got the opportunity to witness those ninja cats in action. The ninneko were cool! They were neither yōkai nor human, but they could fight like them. Not only that, they treated him well despite him being a stranger. Of course, part of it was because of his amazing cover story; they believed him because of his appearance and behavior. It was not hard to pretend to be a cat since he had been acting as Natsume's cat for decades, not to mention how his cat form always made him behave like a genuine cat whether he liked it or not. Even so, he could not dismiss their own professionality and kindness when dealing with a lost cat.

They brought him to a nice old lady they called Nekobaa who fed him with meat and fish and let him play with kittens. She even went as far as thinking whether or not she should contact Konoha shinobi to return him to his rich owner. How nice of her, but Madara was in no hurry to leave, so he started acting as if he was content with his current life and did not care anymore about his owner. They seemed relieved that he was not depressed, and when he began showing his adventurous side, both Nekobaa and her ninneko were amused. Fortunately, they did not deem it strange or suspicious because they never stopped him unless it was dangerous.

For months, Madara lived in Sora-ku. He was careful around the ninneko and humans, but once they trusted him enough to allow him to go alone, he often wandered to empty buildings to visit some yōkai, gathering information from them. Through them, he discovered another daiyōkai sealed in a jinchūriki. They called her Nibi, a two-tailed cat.

It was a nekomata! A cat daiyōkai, also sealed by humans! How dangerous were humans in this world!

"Where can I find one that hasn't been sealed?" Madara asked the yōkai.

"If the daiyōkai that you speak of is on the level of Nibi-sama, there is none."

"None?! They are all sealed?!" How could this be? Just how strong were these humans? These ninjas?

"Yes. But if you mean the boss summons, you can find them in their realm."

Right. There was also that. Boss summons. "Who are they?"

"Oh my! You don't know? Aren't you a ninneko?" a little yōkai gasped. "One of them is of course Nekomata-sama, your own boss! How can they let you leave the Cat Fortress without such a simple knowledge?"

"Let's just say I lost my way back," Madara excused lazily but carefully memorized the information. It turned out the boss of ninneko was also a nekomata. How strong was this yōkai compared to the Nibi, he wondered.

"Other than him, you may find Katsuyu-sama in the Shikkotsu Forest. She is a great slug summon," the other said.

"Or maybe you will be more interested in toads? The Great Toad Sage lives in Mount Myōboku."

"Or snakes. There is the White Snake Sage in the Ryūchi Cave."

They also mentioned Monkey King, Elder Turtle, and Conch King, and they all sounded strong, alright. And perhaps they were also daiyōkai. The slug reminded him of namekujira, the toad reminded him of ōgama, while the snake reminded him of nure-onna. Monkey King might be one of the sarugami. Elder Turtle might be similar to kappa or hōnengame, and Conch King sounded like sazae-oni.

Yet they were called summon, not bijū. They were not sealed, unlike bijū.

"Why are they not sealed?" Madara asked curiously. If humans sealed such strong daiyōkai like Kyūbi and Nibi, surely they were also able to seal those bosses? So why were they free?

"Hmm… we don't know. Maybe because they help humans?" One of them said.

"No, no. I'm sure it's because they have their own realm. They do not live in human territory, so there is no risk of occupation," the other one said.

"You mean Kyūbi and Nibi are at odds with humans?" Madara asked again.

"They… not really."

"No?"

"Yes, no. But yes, I guess?"

"Oi, what do you mean? Speak clearly!" He yelled impatiently, only a few steps away from threatening them with his sharp claws. It was good they understood immediately that this maneki-neko was not some cat to be trifled with.

"We only know what we heard!" The yōkai exclaimed hurriedly. "We don't know what exactly had happened, but… I think humans did it first."

"Did what?"

"Uh… offending the bijū."

Then, for the next few minutes, Madara sat with one paw stretched as he listened attentively to the story of nine daiyōkai—they called it bijū—and their conflict with humans. According to the yōkai, initially, the bijū were not hostile towards humans, but humans feared them. Despite all of this, humans never thought of sealing them until a shinobi took control of the Kyūbi, used him to kill another shinobi and attack a village—Konoha—only to be defeated by the shinobi he wanted to kill. The winning shinobi then proceeded to seal Kyūbi with the help of his wife who became the first jinchūriki. After that, the two began to seal the other bijū until none remained free.

"They fear them, but at the same time, they covet their power. The seal was made for that, I heard," one of the yōkai said after the story ended.

"For taking their power?"

"Yes. And to contain them."

More like to imprison them, Madara thought. How pitiful those daiyōkai were for falling victim to humans' fear and greed. Those fool shinobi reminded him of some exorcists he knew. Heck, the one who caused him to get stranded in this place was also as foolish as them.

"Hm… what about you lot?" the cat questioned. It was a valid question. Back in his world, many low-level yōkai fell prey to exorcists. They were sealed, turned into shikigami, or purified aka killed. To protect themselves, they submitted to daiyōkai who in return would protect them in their territory. Logically, if humans here were able to seal daiyōkai, shouldn't they also be able to seal low-level yōkai? These puny little yōkai did not live under any daiyōkai, yet they seemed to have a relatively peaceful life.

"Why would they seal us? We are weak. We can't give them power, unlike the bijū," one of them said.

"Besides, they can't see us," the other added.

"They can't see you?" Madara narrowed his eyes. "But they can see the bijū and summons, right?"

"Yes. That's because they have sufficient chakra for humans to see them."

"Chakra?" that was a new word for him. "What's that?"

"Spiritual energy, of course! That's what we eat." After that, they explained the definition of chakra and how it was used. Apparently, chakra was the fuel used by shinobi to create their flashy jutsu. Of course, the same went for bijū and summons. They also told him that unlike humans whose chakra pool could be expanded simply by training properly, yōkai's chakra level was determined from birth and would never get any higher just by training. If they wanted to become stronger, they had to absorb chakra from their environment, such as trees and small animals. Stronger yōkai, however, might eat the weaker yōkai when they are not summoned by humans.

"We can get chakra from humans if we are summoned by them, but they are only interested in stronger yōkai, so before we can get to that level, we can only take chakra from our environment," one of them said.

"By the way, bijū are the exception. They are born with a lot of chakra. In fact, they are made of chakra," the other added.

Madara straightened his spine, sitting straight after listening to the group of lower yōkai. That was quite a lot of information coming from them. Bijū, summons, yōkai, they all sounded the same. The difference was only in the amount of chakra they got. Yōkai must be the broader term while bijū and summons were terms for a specific type of yōkai. That was not too difficult to comprehend, but something was still troubling him.

"You said stronger yōkai would eat the weaker ones. How do you protect yourselves?" Because really, they did not live under daiyōkai. There was no bijū nor great summon in their vicinity, only some ninneko and humans who could not see them.

"You may think so, but actually, this place is quite safe for us."

"Yes, yes! Stronger yōkai rarely dare to come here since the ninneko would be able to sense them. Shinobi also often visit here for their mission. They are Nekobaa's regular customers, you know! Besides, established summons usually eat from their own realm and won't go to human territory randomly."

"The food here isn't bad either. We can eat small animals, like cockroaches and spiders. Although this place is mostly abandoned, some humans still live here. We can also eat from their leftovers—oh, don't think we eat like stray cats! What we eat is the inner energy, something humans do not eat."

Right. Of course Madara knew. Many yōkai in his world were like that as well, just that in this world, there was this "vitamin" called chakra the yōkai loved to eat to get stronger.

After chatting for a few minutes more, Madara left the lower yōkai. He pondered over all the information he just obtained, trying to figure out where his place was in this world. He recalled again his experience before coming to this city, the time when he realized humans could see his real form. They should not be able to, but they could. That only meant his power (maybe chakra? He had no idea if he had that thing, but if his body followed the rule of this place, he should have it) was at least on par with summons. He was a tailed beast, but he was pretty sure his whole body was not made of chakra, so it was unlikely for him to be categorized as bijū.

He was a daiyōkai, that much he was sure. But in this world, there were no such things. You were either just a yōkai, a summon, or a bijū. He did not know what a bijū looked like, but if people thought of him as one, they would hunt him down to seal him. Even if it turned out he was more of a boss summon than a bijū, it still did not make him safe since he had no contract with humans, nor did he have a realm of his own. He had no idea what those humans would do to a "rogue" summon like him. If he wanted to keep himself safe, he should never reveal his identity which meant he should not return to his real form.

No real form = no flying = no speedy journey. It was going to be a pain exploring the world with his tiny cat legs.

Ugh. What a drag.

Chapter 2 is here! It's a bit confusing when I thought about yōkai and summons and bijū since as far as I know, Narutoverse doesn't say much about yōkai (even though the bijū and summons have similarities with yōkai). There is Nue, yōkai chimera something in Boruto who absorbs chakra, so based on this, I went with the idea that yōkai needs chakra from outside sources including humans to get stronger.

I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Thank you for reading. Review please.