i sukaku

by r0e0d999

[Note]000000000 for audio

1. 1

Chapter 1: Primary Specific Samsaric Error

Chapter Text

A primary specific samsaric error… didn't happen often. Or really, at all . The set of requisite circumstances to pierce the inherent protections of the soul and corrode the barrier between life and past, now and then - to hold memories beyond the mortal coil and reintegrate them into the newborn life… Long. Exhaustively long, and oftentimes weirdly specific.

So, this begins with weird specificities. He should have expected that, really- his life had been nothing but a mix of incredibly odd and enduringly mundane since his first memories. A lost toe in first grade, accidentally swapped with another's and reattached to the wrong person. Mediocre grades, with an inkling that he might - note: wasn't- advanced in mathematics.

A best friend who went missing for two and a half months, only to return and reveal he'd been with his father on their dairy farm. A stable group of three companions- including the missing milkman- and a decent, if somewhat introverted social life during middle school.

An older sister who decided to go on a long distance business trip to Venezuela five and half months after he saw her talking to military personnel at twelve thirty in the morning. Five postcards and the occasional video call, congratulating him on his six A's and the one B- in psychology.

Dying of hyper-aggressive heart cancer at nineteen- tumors arrhythmically spread across his body day by day- numb, the sound of his breathing the only way to know he still was . …there wasn't really anything to balance that out. At least his professors had been willing to give him some extensions, so… highest grades he'd gotten so far?

His vision started to fuzz around the edges, and he sighed, hearing the soft sound in the hospital's empty silence. He really felt like he should have expected something like this…

………

A world away two brothers stood on broken rocks, staves clutched in nervous grips, half the power of a god in duplicate roaring beneath their skin as they stared down the monstrous form of their mother's dream.

Their nightmare .

………

On the sixth of January, some time after his sight faded, but not before he could no longer feel the cold , the icy dread that tickled at his misplaced toe and failing organs-

A boy died.

………

"Your dream is over , Mother!" A rumbling roar- the crashing roar of a soulless beast given soul, an abomination of nature twisted over- desire for power, for chakra already lost. A seal in three hundred and sixty one scintillating iridescent lines, characters flowing like water over oil under the light of an empty sky. "The people deserve to be free! Please-" his voice cracked even as his chakra shrouded around him like the weight of the world- "please…"

A hand gently brushed the side of his horn, soft tremors hidden by the mere act of comfort. "She's gone , Hagoromo. The God Tree has exerted its dominion over her." A different seal, no less powerful, flickered into existence over robes. "And mother… if you can hear this…" two palms slammed down onto the bound abomination, brilliant with the force of their chakra. "We're sorry it had to come to this."

The world shuddered . A point - a singularity of force sparked into existence far above the battlefield, the very continent beneath them peeling off the face of the earth like so much dust and ruin. A worm-like white, the essence of abomination, the soul of a woman who had ate the cumulation of the god tree's cruel reign and ascended to little more than chakra itself twisted free from the Juubi in the same moment its mortal being slammed into Hagoromo.

Chakra- so much energy , unlimited and immense- rushed through his tenketsu, pooling at the locus of inevitability around his eight gate. Without his mother's influence, it was just a drone- advanced, viscous and capable, but soulless .

The Juubi was trapped.

A breath caught on the settling sound of crumbling rock, replaced by aborted laughter, then choked giggles. "We did it. We actually did it. I didn't think we'd live to see the sunrise."

Hagoromo smiled slightly- it had been far, far too long since they'd been able to laugh like that. Looking out over the continent that was more dirty gray and ashen brown then the vibrant green it should be… it might be a long time yet again.

He smiled- watched the moon rise for the first time- felt the ten-tails shifting within him, ever probing in impatient patience. He smiled.

………

A soul swept through the unrelenting torrents of samsara, that cyclical loop, ever onwards to some unseeable past and future. In [here] where time meant less than the letters of a name, and a name meant less than the illusion of continuity, the soul drifted with a million others of itself, an infinity of others.

A faint essence of not-theirs colored-

A bit of wispy something, from being caught at the edge of being for a moment too long, held by the dying grasps of a tenacious parasite.

Emotion, a flicker of it- gentle and confused. Sorrow caught in the blurred edge of dead and the next thing off. It didn't want sorrow.

For a single moment, an endless second and an eon unlimited, it wanted , and in wanting was infinitely more alive-

………

The walls between life and death are already weak under the clever use of chakra- the immortality of nature, in congruence with the possibility of soul? To those who possessed the absolute height of power… it made anything possible.

Ootsutsuki Hagoromo stood in a sealed chamber two and a half miles beneath the waste-lands, chakra flickering in a pattern soothing to sore tenketsu. He breathed - in. Out. Shift. In. Out . The Juubi shifted in the space beneath his seal, responding to the simple stimuli.

Amaranthine eyes snapped open, and their gaze weighed the world. With absolute perfection of control he grasped the entire mass of the Juubi's chakra, feeling it squirm in a sort of inquisitive indecisiveness as he set it running through his body, pooling just before the eyes that broke samsara.

In the end, creation of all things was just a wish.

His palms clapped together with a deep thrum, a wave of dust blasted away from his furiously flared robe, rinnegan shining almost eerily bright in the cavern's darkness. With the whole of his being he focused on a singlar desire- he forgot his small village. His ninshu classes. The monks at the temple. The birds, chirping on a warm summer's day.

The waves- ever- moving.

Sound.

Hamura, pale eyes, mouthing- a warning to be careful.

The screaming of the Juubi.

The darkness of the chamber around him, the taste of dust on his tongue, cool air, light- and he spoke without speaking- "Become nine!"

To understand… that, was not his wish. He wished for the Juubi to be split into nine parts- not nine smaller Juubi clones, not nine portions of unthinking chakra to seal away beneath the bones of the earth, not nine mindless drones-

The Sage of Six Paths demanded nine people - and that was the final piece of the puzzle.

For all its impossible powers, chakra could not make a soul from nothing.

………

In that bleak, roaring nothingness swimming with all that would and wouldn't, a shard of reality forced its way into death. A swirling vortex of energy- just a tinge of some greater work, the soul knew inherently- brushed its way over the currents of the wandering, gathering enough of an impression so it could create its own .

The power touched his- and his want - however faint and undirected, however it had barely just sparked- grabbed at the sheer essence of possibility and was swept along.

………

Even then, there was a final barrier to a primary specific samsaric error. To any normal being, even a chakra construct, the memories of a soul would have failed to imprint on the physical essence of their body. The bijuu were not chakra constructs, though- they were chakra itself, a universal law. In being , their souls were written immortal into the fabric of existence itself, and so that problem resolved itself rather neatly.

Smile playing softly across his lips, the Sage of Six Paths watched eight sets of eyes flicker open, flickering illumination cast from the last remnants of exhausted chakra in the air. "Hello," he said softly to those who'd woken and the one who hadn't. "My name is Ootsutsuki Hagoromo. I'm your father."

Children. He'd wanted those for so… so long. His grin was the widest it'd been in years, looking at the eight small beastlings who watched him with adorable confusion… and the one tanuki that slept.Chapter 2: Unfolding

Summary:

And Shukaku, who knew the tragedy unfolding before them in the million untraceable patterns that made fate, dedicated himself to being ready.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

He felt… feelings. That was certainly new- a wash of sensation prickling at the edge of his mind, whispered words on the edge of his hearing he couldn't quite parse. That was fine- hearing something was better than hearing nothing at all. He hadn't thought he'd wake up again after the last treatments had started to fail- they'd told him he'd die…

Exhaustion crept up on him and he slipped quietly to sleep once again, dreaming of open landscapes and freedom, fantastical beasts which looked down at him with concerned eyes. He dreamed of being more alive than he'd ever been before- he dreamed of ancient energy and flowering trees ever stretched to the sky; of the gentle breeze that would brush through the forest outside of his classroom.

A thousand things he didn't quite understand, and some he did- mundane, and not. It was a good dream- of warm things, gentle susurrations and quiet embraces. Happyness. Emotion, implacable, wrapped around him like a comforting blanket.

For a while, he slept and did not dream.

………

"...they barely wake. Do you see…" a lilting, melodic language- different from English, but no less intelligible "...not supposed to be sick. How can a chakra construct get sick ?"

A muffled noise- laughter, he supposed, or maybe someone just got punched particularly hard. "The great and noble Sage of-"

"Shut up, Hamura-"

"-reduced to a fretting parent." Ah. That sound was definitely someone getting punched, followed by a few more mumbled words. "I'll take a look-" a faint spike of intent-energy-potential , the sensation of being watched then- numbness. Silence. "I can't see anything particularly wrong- the chakra network isn't human, but I didn't expect it to be." That had been exhausting- he was tired, so… so very tired.

Something in that sentence strained to grab his attention- he got the impression that it was critically important, but he just couldn't bring himself to grasp onto that thread of mind, wakefulness slipping past, into placid rest.

He dreamed of a room- in turns too small and far too vast. The weight of all his memories- the bookshelf half full, fitted neatly with a side of random trinkets. Disgustingly mint-green paint, the color he'd always hated… scratches on the door, hanging posters and stacked textbooks. Beyond the open door a vast, empty plain stretched far into the distance.

A step-

The rest of his dreams were a blur, colors and impressions mixing together in bewildering kaleidoscopic echoes. In one moment of particular clarity he sat opposite a cat that blazed with blue fire, watching it speak and hearing no words. It felt… familiar. Familial, despite its inhumanity…

Weakly, he grasped that thought- there was something important about that thought . His eyes met the cat's heterochromatic pair, and then he was adrift again- asleep, undreaming.

"...unbalanced yin energy…"

"...knowing what to look for-" that prickle of knowledge that he was being watched- "It's a lot better than it was just a month ago. They'll probably… …soon."

Those weren't medical terms.

Those weren't medical terms .

It was the first thing that'd properly registered since he'd slipped asleep for what should have been the final time, which was frankly a bit embarrassing because the next thing that registered was that he'd been ignoring that pesky not human designation for- probably, if this man was to be believed- over a month.

He shifted, and the conversation paused, replaced by a quiet shuffling and the tense air of expectation. This was… really hard. In that moment, his heart went out to all those who didn't die and had to go through the torture that would be physical therapy. Experimentally he twitched his limbs, shifting his arms and legs and letting his tail flop down-

Tail.

He didn't have the brainpower for this right now, but- tail . Groaning softly- a concerningly deep sound compared to what his voice should have been- he pried open his eyes and immediately wished he hadn't.

Pros? Well… he wasn't dead.

Cons? Looking up at worried, amaranthine purple eyes and short horns, feeling the heavy weight of a- something- idly moving behind his back... he decided to go back to sleep. If he absolutely had to be Shukaku, the most idiotically tragic tanuki to ever walk the face of the earth, then he could at least do it after a good night's rest..

………

"Tag!" That was the first- and to anything else would have been the last- word he heard as he woke up in that strange vastness, an orange paw slamming into his side with the force of a truck and bowling him right into the side of a burning cat. "You're supposed to tag her, not-"

"Kurama you idiot! " Matatabi shoved him off with a hiss of rage, stalking over to whack the kitsune over the head. "Little sibling is delicate ! Father said we can't play with them like that!"

"But-" Kurama looked about ready to cry. His brother. Kurama . He puffed himself up, tails floofing out behind his back. "They're here - we're not dragging them into the mindscape- they actually came in themselves! Plus, I'm the big brother, so I'm in charge."

Matatabi's flames flared half their height again as she leapt onto Kurama's back with a cry of fury. "Older by half a second !"

A smirk. "Still older-"

"Doesn't matter if you're a brat -"

"Uncle Hamura said not to repeat-"

Nope. Not right now. If this was what the young bijuu were like... well, he could see how the original Shukaku developed a complex. Watching the two brawl, presence forgotten to the side, he decided that he really didn't need to deal with this right now- he had plenty of time in the future for his eight siblings. That thought alone was enough seem him neatly out of the shared mindscape.

He was fairly sure they didn't even realize he'd left.

………

Several months passed in fairly busy monotony, for the most part sleep mixed with a few brief moments of wakefulness. Slowly, so painfully slowly, he began to get up and move about- his body rebelled at the action, and he was relatively sure the few villagers that saw him were convinced he'd somehow managed to get drunk. At least they never had to get used to walking with a tail after a lifetime as a perfectly normal, non chakra-beast student.

The family visited often, if rarely in person- and they liked him well enough as the adorable little brother he was. Or, at least in Kurama's case, as a plushy ball of sand, just perfect for hugs and generalized torment.

The greatest part of those few months of recovery was- inevitably- Hagoromo. Father… infinitely patient, quiet and reserved yet perfectly firm, a glance able to quell even Son Goku's rage. He couldn't help but to love him despite that guilt, his open kindness and worldly magnificence, and the soft voice as he wove stories with the rising sunlight.

"Shukaku." He blinked, parsing the voice as he woke- feeling the faint sensation of a small hand nestled beneath his chin. "Son, the sun rises and the birds sing their songs. The wind whispers. Wake up." Gold eyes met rinnegan's deep gaze, and he couldn't help but smile. "Oh? Hello there, little Shukaku."

"...hello, Hagoromo."

"You can call me father."

Shukaku winced- there was still something… off about calling the legendary Sage of Six Paths father. He had a dad- perpetually punctual, never able to put down a book or a good cup of coffee, full of good humor at his job and distant bitterness at the mention of family. "I… sorry, father."

"You should have come with Gyuki to the wastes- Hamura was driving himself insane trying to fix the water table." He felt himself getting tugged into an embrace, small arms sinking a few inches into the sand of his form. "Shukaku. Son. I love-"

"I'm not." His breath picked up in a few sharp gasps, sand shifting in agitation as he tried- and failed- to cringe back from the surprisingly strong hug. "I'm not Shukaku." There. Simple enough- what was a secret to love? You didn't have to wait for betrayal if you were the betrayer first.

Hagoromo stepped back, solemn- not disapproving, just… curious. Patient. "Oh? Then who are you?"

"I- I was human." He was pretty sure there was supposed to be something about not telling people this sort of thing right away, but against those eyes that felt as if they could look through anything, against that soft embrace… "Nineteen years old, college student-" he paused, looking carefully for any sign of disapproval- for anything but the careful blankness spread across Hagoromo's face. "I… knew some things about this world."

"...really? What do you know about me?"

"Sage of Six Paths." Hagoromo nodded softly, "revered as a god-"

Hagoromo's eyes widened comically as he sucked in a deep breath, only to be sent into a coughing fit by the sand he'd inhaled. "A- a god? Me? If I had ever thought of breaking confidence in the first place, then this has convinced me otherwise well enough."

A glance passed between them- "Hamura will never hear of this. Promise." A smile cracked across his face and then they were laughing, peals of bright drifting through the effusive dawn.

"You always were the most mature of the children," softly, a murmur barely audible even to his enhanced senses. A hand reached up, cusping the side of his nose- it was so easy to forget sometimes the strength slung easily across his staff, clasped tightly in the gudodama floating behind him like so many black stars. "Shukaku. Son. I will never hate you, never not love you, no matter what."

"...why?"

A sigh, so weary. "You are you. Others may not be so understanding... but is it not the duty of the father to care for the son? To reject your trust would be the height of cruelty." His eyes lit up in excitement, and Shukaku tentatively smiled back. "Now- tell me about this past life of yours…" and for a while they spoke of cities to touch the sky, urban sprawls and global connections and peace .

Father and son.

………

Shukaku glared at the sand in front of him. Hands clasped in a careful seal, will focused to a singular purpose, he pushed.

The sand moved maybe… half an inch. If he was lucky.

A hoof pushed the sand- unfortunately much further than what he'd managed with his chakra. "Come on Shukaku. You promised you'd help me after you finished with your boring sand stuff. Please? Pretty-"

"Fine, Kokuo. Look, the chakra sharing ninshu is too advanced for either of us. Until we master some basic chakra exercises, father won't even consider teaching you."

"But you know everything ." Kokuo glanced up at him with that particularly needy face he'd perfected over the past odd year or so, and Shukaku couldn't help but sigh in fond exasperation.

Even if his relationship with most of his elder siblings was… politely distant… he at least had ever-curious Kokuo to learn with. "I don't know everything . I've just been putting a lot of work into learning from father- we both have a drive to see a world at peace." Kokuo pouted, and Shukaku deftly pressed his tail into his forehead.

Maybe he shouldn't be taking his familial advice from the person who'd slaughtered a clan who hadn't even been founded yet. Oh well- it was certainly fun watching his pout turn to an adorable scowl as he kicked at his sand- "You brat! Uncle Hamura brought that from the wastes-" with a cry of mock anger he threw himself at the horse.

"Hey! You can't even use your sand-"

Shukaku whacked him over the head with his tail, and was whacked by Kokuo's five in turn. "You can't use boil release either!"

"I totally could!" Shukaku glanced at him with barely constrained incredulity, eliciting a quiet huff. "...if I wanted to. Yeah. I could boil you right up if I wanted to!"

"No you couldn't."

Kokuo deflated a bit. "Yeah, you're right. Dummy." A few rough minutes of detangling followed, until they were both sitting by the edge of the river as noon slipped past. " What are you going to even do with sand? Like… make a desert?"

"I'm sure uncle would appreciate the help with the wastes, but no." He grinned, and it was sharp . "I have a plan ."

………

"Fuuinjutsu?" Hagoromo arched a brow. "Are you sure?"

He bounced softly on his feet, trying not to look too excited. "Of course I am. Its potential is limitless- and I could apply seals so easily with my sand. Just… shape it right, then- seal!"

"Unlimited potential to lock away junk and blow yourself up more like it. I hope you understand that my sealing knowledge is… rudimentary at best."

Shukaku hoped his gaze appropriately conveys the sheer incredulity he felt in that moment. "You sealed the Juubi . You sealed grandma into the moon . How can you be bad at sealing?"

He only smiled softly, serene as ever floating above his ring of gudodama. "Your uncle and I built both prisons off a storage seal. Gamamaru was an absolute annoyance about giving up the only stable seal he could get working." It took an expert to see his subtle tells, but Shukaku had spent the better part of three years with him and could recognize the faint exasperated fondness around his eyes, the subtle… embarrassment? No.Impossible- the Sage of Six Paths did not get embarrassed . An embarrassed father was like a calm Son Goku- halfway between a dream and unthinkable. "If you think you can do something great with seals, then I'll teach you. I'm sure you'll far outshine me one day."

"Some of the things they could do with seals in the future were frankly insane. There was one barrier that could contain the Juubi."

Hagoromo's eyes widened in genuine surprise. " Impressive . How about this- you bully Hamura into fixing the chakra transfer spike with me, and I'll get him to join us for fuuinjutsu lessons before…" he paused, then shook his head. "I'm certain it will be a fruitful endeavor-" but Shukaku could still see the faint lines of stress across his brow.

Perhaps…

It meant nothing.

………

Four years later Hamura bade them farewell from the mountaintop, the shimmering green light of the tensingan drifting around the forms of a hundred loyal Ootsutsuki vassals. He stopped by the bijuu, running a hand across each of their faces with a weary, so gentle expression. "I'll see you again one day, children." He stopped by Shukaku, tugging him- or really, his leg- into an embrace. "You too, kid. Keep working on your seals."

Tensingan met the gaze of rinnegan, and disappeared in a flash.

Shukaku had never seen his father's stress lines deeper. For once, he looked his age.

………

Kokuo paused at the entrance to his rough-hewn cavern, scoured out of the rock under the- slowly - increasing strength of his sand. "Hey… can you help me with that… chakra sticking? I really want to get to the transfer!"

Shukaku paused, looking up from where he'd been grinding fuuinjutsu ink. At the rate he was going, he wouldn't be able to use his sand in seals for years . Bijuu sized reserves were a pain- he'd thought that, being made out of chakra… but no. He wasn't so lucky- practice it was. "...sorry. Not today."

Kokuo scowled softly, and walked away.

………

Ten years after he'd first opened his eyes as Shukaku, during a particularly warm spring morning- as cherry blossoms danced on the wind and the others- father included- finally managed to see the obvious, Ootsutsuki Hagoromo was engaged to his 'not a girlfriend, I swear.' Wise indeed.

She was a nice woman- calm, collected, and always willing to interact with them even when their squabbles drained lakes and shattered trees. Cheerful, too- Matatabi was never afraid to take her to the sea or the border of the wastes when she asked, and even Isobu opened up a little over the following years.

It was a nice time. Peaceful, for the most part, as people rebuilt after the Juubi's rampage. There was an air of mundane peacefulness to the mountain glens, vast open plains and dense forests. Things settled into a rhythm of normal .

Matatabi would run, and run, and sometimes take her with.

Gyuki tried and failed to sing like his mother.

Isobu would watch as she wove small white garments, and demurely pester him for questions whenever he managed to put down his latest attempt at fuuinjutsu.

Shy, prideful Kurama kept his distance, always watching.

Son Goku broke stuff- as per the usual.

Chomei dreamed of the day she'd fly.

Kokuo pestered him, and then Hagoromo for training with his chakra, and managed an impressive level of control after a while, even if the chakra transfer technique still evaded him-

And Shukaku, who knew the tragedy unfolding before them in the million untraceable patterns that made fate, dedicated himself to being ready.

………

Ootsutsuki Indra was born on a cold winter's morning, to the excited eyes of nine immortals and their father not-deity, and the tired gaze of a mortal woman who felt the bite of Kaguya's Infinite Tsukuyomi far too heavy on her bones.

Ootsutsuki Asura was born ten months later to the solemn gaze of Shukaku and Hagoromo, and the pasty, too-pale zetsu white of a mother who'd given everything for her children.Chapter 3: The Sage of Six Paths

Summary:

"They kill each other."

Hagoromo- his father grasped his hand, and pondered, implored so faintly- serene. "Be with them, then- trust your love will overcome hate. For an old man, eh?" He smiled, and Shukaku smiled back, unable to completely dispel the faint foreboding that laid heavy in his chest.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

"They kill each other."

Hagoromo- his father grasped his hand, and pondered, implored so faintly- serene. "Be with them, then- trust your love will overcome hate. For an old man, eh?" He smiled, and Shukaku smiled back, unable to completely dispel the faint foreboding that laid heavy in his chest.

………

It was only as he interacted with Indra- and later, Asura- that he realized how much of himself he'd lost in his reincarnation. It had already been somewhat obvious- his father, for all his power, barely came up to his chest, and the fine details inherent in sealing were incredibly annoying. Compared against Indra, though… it made it real .

He was not human. Objectively, he knew that. Subjectively, when a three year old Asura couldn't understand why the villagers shied away from him as he tugged him through the town to the compound. When they'd slip out of his way with poorly hidden fear Indra would glare at them with his adorably childish petulance, which really didn't do much to help.

He understood their wariness- the Juubi's apocalyptic rampage, fire and crimson terror fresh on their minds. For the most part he ignored them- but as much as he wished it didn't, it wore on him. On the cold nights sitting around a fireplace with Kokuo, the Sage and his children, conversation flowing freely- laughter on winds and gentle smiles, he could almost imagine- just going to the market. Speaking. A past of metal and machines, and none of that sickening fear .

When Indra turned five, he stopped leaving the Ootsutsuki compound, the last of the bijuu to do so. His father hugged him close after the celebration and whispered the platitudes he desperately needed to hear- and he desperately allowed himself to believe them.

The years grew long.

………

His father grew more distant after his wife's death. Not much- just a faint veneer of joy where it'd once been genuine and wholehearted, a wizened sage where there'd once been a man so overflowing with life and vibrancy. A hint of austerity, the flowers she'd always given him absent once again from his robes.

Aside from him Kurama was the only one who'd noticed- emotional sensing at its finest- but there was really nothing to do. After all, despite the almost uncharacteristic worry Kurama showed for his father- what can a twice-teenager suffering through the exact same loss hope to do? So, as the years dragged by he alternated between fuuinjutsu experiments and attempts to just… be there for the human part of his family.

Sighing, he set his brush to the side- careful not to knock over the small jar of ink resting to the side. He'd been growing, recently, shooting up almost a foot a year and the increasing difficulty he had with his Fuuinjutsu supplies was only an annoying reminder of the fact.

He was not looking forward to being the size of a city.

"Shuku!" A little kid skidded around the corner to knock into him, just barely avoiding the ink. "I did it! I- oh, is that your fuuinjutsu stuff? A storage… uh… something about size?" He shook his head, blinking to clear his thoughts as his shaggy locks flew everywhere. Indra was a cute kid when he got all earnest like this. "That's so cool! Look! I did it- you just have to harmonize your internal energies, like an inverse chakra transfer jutsu- then adjust the frequency to the the most prominent nature nature in your body…" his face furrowed in concentration as he held his hand out, a weak flame flickering into existence above his palm.

"Impressive!" Watching how he lit up at the rumbled praise, it was hard to see the incredible destruction that lay down that path. "I'm sure it'll be very useful- perhaps the potters and the cooks would appreciate a few techniques? I'll ask Kokuo to help you with your fire release."

Indra nodded seriously, letting the flame peter out with the last remnants of his chakra before rushing off in the other direction- far too excited to maintain his puppy-like facade of his father's cool demeanor. Shukaku just watched him leave with a faint look of pride somewhere in the vast complexity that was emotion- he'd never gotten to be a big brother, before.

…it was nice.

Sighing, he curled up and sank into the shared mindscape, tugging gently at Kokuo's presence until he stumbled into mindscape beside him with a faint nod of greeting. "Shukaku. It's been some time since you've last joined us."

A look of such resigned weariness slouched across his form, and Shukaku couldn't help but chuckle at his woe. "Matatabi?"

"Son Goku is always getting into fights with Gyuki, Matatabi makes a mess of the wastes whenever she goes out to run, and the others are always climbing over each other to spend time with father. It's worse than the compound wall incident."

Shukaku snorted in barely restrained humor. "I remember that. Kurama jumped on top of Chomei to get into the compound early- and Isobu barely dodged Gyuki. Give them my regards when you manage to wrangle them into behaving."

"Nobody wrangles Kurama. He is the unwranglable."

"What about father?"

Kokuo looked heavenwards in fond exasperation. "Father doesn't wrangle Kurama- all he has to do is enter the room and the silly kitsune will melt into a puddle of happiness and general amicability." Shukaku thought back, and bit back a dopey smile at some of the fond memories. "...what did you need me for?"

"Indra managed to make a fire release ninshu, and I can't help him with that element. If you could, I'm sure he'd love the help." Kokuo's face was carefully blank for a moment before he sighed, nodding. "How you get them to like you, I'll never… for you Shukaku."

"I'm sure he can help with your chakra transfer ninshu-" and that was all he needed to say to get him to perk up right back up again. "How's that, by the way?"

"I'm getting really close! Father said that I have enough control for the receiving step, and I'm almost at the second stage of the connection…" for a few- minutes or hours, or just time immaterial, they spoke of memories and chakra and long days spent pursuing myriad interests, and when he dropped out of the mindscape he was content to ignore the future.

………

A month after Indra turned ten years old he got in a spat with Kurama over some inconsequential fire release technique- Shukaku hadn't heard what it was about more than the general idea of 'foxfire,' but it ended like most of their arguments did- with copious amounts of brawling.

Except- Kurama was the kyuubi , and Indra was a ten year old kid who proceeded to get summeraly defeated by a single swipe of his tail, two ribs and his arm broken as he was tossed into a tree. Father had come running, pulling them apart with his gudodama and sending Kurama away before healing Indra.

He scolded them both, afterwards, but Kurama avoided his youngest siblings after that.

………

Matatabi, as Shukaku understood from the time he spent with her, could care less about Indra, but disliked Asura with a fervent passion befitting her fiery nature. It was stupid, and illogical, but the absolute thrashing he received when he told them so disinclined him from pursuing it further.

It would manifest as a polite disinterest when their father was around, and she never took it much further than that when he wasn't, but she refused to interact with him.

Shukaku thought he reminded her of his mother.

………

Indra was thirteen when Isobu told them in his shy voice that he'd been inspired to explore the peace and quiet of the deep sea. Son Goku- his closest friend amongst the brothers- fought so incredibly hard to keep him with them, but the turtle had always had the most resolute of wills when he set his mind to something.

In the end their father had to separate them, and for all Shukaku's attempts at mediation they were perfectly content to just… ignore one another. Two brothers left, then, instead of one.

Two days later Shukaku found his father sitting beside his wife's grave, folded neatly into a meditative pose as eyes so weary stared down at the flower-littered patch of earth. They sat together in silence for a long while, quiet- content for a moment to bask in the nature of vibrancy and springtime airs.

"I plan to send them on their journey, soon. In five years, or less." Lines of stress wore weary tracks around his face, purple eyes eerily dark in the midday sun. "Both Hamura and I spend no insignificant amount of time traveling after we trapped the Juubi, and it will do them both good to experience the world outside of the Ootsutsuki village." He sighed, pushing his gudodama to the side and gently sprawling out on his back. "The sky is beautiful, isn't it?"

Shukaku bit back a snort. "Get to the point, old man. You look stressed."

"I fear, son… I thought, after you told me your tale, that the future you spoke of would be impossible. I tried so… so hard . For her-" and they both know who she spoke of. "For my mother's dream, before she stepped too far and went… very mad." Talking about Kaguya was perhaps the thing Hagoromo liked the least , but here… here he was just quietly exhausted. "If I've failed as a father to you nine, then how much more have I to Indra and Asura? I fear my foolishness may have damned us all."

"No. You're the best father anyone could have ever asked for-" and he spoke with the resolute conviction of completely believed, the logical reasoning of someone who'd had more than one father across the years and worlds. "We're a handful- I'll admit that, but you've always been able to keep us settled."

"Six Paths senjutsu does not a good father make, Shukaku. Especially to two little humans…"

"You're not perfect, but hey- nobody is, right?" After a second's consideration he laid down beside him, careful not to cause any undue damage to the graveyard. The sky really was beautiful- a touch of cerulean blue, a sea of wispy white and the beaming sun hung across the firmament's tapestry. "Let me rephrase what I said earlier- you've managed to keep us remarkably well adjusted, despite the distrust from the others. You're charming, peaceful, wise, and resolute. You-"

"Alright, alright! You sound like your uncle- he'd always nag me about my worrying, then go and formulate the most outrageous plans. The moon was his idea, you know?"

Shukaku thought back to what he could remember of his uncle before he'd left- the long nights spent exploring fuuinjutsu, days together with the family, ink-stains all across his father's pristine robes. "Yeah… yeah, I can see that."

"I suppose I fear for nothing… but, I cannot help but imagine how it could be. Everything is so similar to what you spoke of…"

"Father, please. I don't think there's any reason to worry- Indra loves his brother, and Asura loves Indra immensely too. Things are different already- there's nothing to fear. So long as you ensure Indra he's still loved, I don't think he'll be all that upset." A little smirk crawled onto his face. "Plus, can you imagine Indra giving your sermons? He'd have a panic attack the first day."

The Sage of Six Paths, the man, Hagoromo wheezed with laughter. " True , true indeed." A moment, in peace- "you're a kind soul. I will never regret giving life to you, son- thanks for assuaging and old man's worries."

"Love you too, father…" ah, the sky really was beautiful, as flowers on a breeze fluttered beside him, and the moon hung, just barely visible over the horizon.

………

"That must be frustrating." Fifteen year old Indra had translated his belligerent introversion into an unfailingly polite, almost unnerving calm mask. Just under six feet tall from acute not being malnourished, the languid grace and cold eyes looking down at his work might have been intimidating were he not a twenty foot tall bijuu who remembered his attempts at the same indifference as a bumbling six year old.

He- carefully- set his current project down beside him. "What? Using the brush, or trying to figure out how this blasted thing works?" Storage seals, he'd found, were both incredibly versatile and almost impossible to get a specific effect from. Drawing one just slightly wrong could cause it to store twenty times more, or- much more likely- make it explode.

"Both, I suppose."

"Take my word for it- growing up sucks."

A smile quirked across Indra's otherwise blank face. " I , for one, have no plans to grow twenty feet tall."

Shukaku sighed in forlorn exasperation. "If only . I'm gonna be almost a mile tall, one day." Then even the massive corridors of the Ootsutsuki compound wouldn't be able to hold him. No amount of austere woodwork and careful construction could account for his future size.

Indra gaped for a moment before cooling his expression back into his polite mask. "Inconvenient doesn't even begin to describe that. I hope you get some of your ideas working before then. Either way, I was coming to you in hopes of recruiting your help with my wind release training-"

A blur crashed into Indra, knocking him over- right into Shukaku's inks. "No help me! Izumi and Aki and- they didn't believe me when I said I could control the earth!" Ah. Asura- precocious thing, just as fast as Indra in a race, ten times as clumsy, and incapable of not putting a smile on his face.

Indra scowled at his little brother as he pushed himself off the ground, white robes stained splotchy black. "That's because you can't use earth. You can barely use some of the most basic ninshu- why do you think you could use earth release techniques?"

"Well…" Asura fiddled with his fingers as he glanced between his brothers, face scarlet in some impressive mix of embarrassment and indignation. "I was like- 'hey dad, can you please tell me what super awesome things I can do?' and dad was like, 'ah, yes son. With my sagely sage ways and super cool eyes, I foresee you can do tree release-' and I was like 'tree?' and he was like 'earth and water' and then I told Izumi and Aki and they don't believe me and-"

"Alright!" Both of them fell silent at once, Asura sheepishly and Indra… still sheepishly, but cold and collected at the same time. "I can teach you both elemental manipulation- just keep in mind that my chakra control's still sort of terrible. I probably won't be able to help you with anything really fine." The two nodded, the actions eerily similar despite the differences between the two boys. "So, tell me where you're at.."

"I can manifest some amount of wind natured-"

"I was working, and I can get the chakra to go like, rumble in my coils, but then I have to make it earth natured and I can't-" They both stopped talking at once, glaring at each other in the seconds before Shukaku whacked them- lightly- over the head with his tail.

"Talk politely , you two- one at a time." The silence stretched, both of them eying each other with a sort of playful wariness. They thought they were being subtle, but Shukaku could practically see the thoughts running through their heads as they waited to interrupt each other. "...Indra. You first."

"No fair- " a sharp look shut Asura's whining down, but the sulking in the corner was completely unnecessary and entirely his own prerogative.

Indra glanced to the sulk-corner, clearly trying to hide a snicker. "Right. Well, before my baby brother punted me into your fuuinjutsu supplies and interrupted my self-assessment, I was saying that I'd managed to both create and expel wind natured chakra, but cannot maintain any significant degree of control over it."

Sensing Indra's time for speech was up, Asura's sulking was promptly forgotten in favor of… exuberant… speech. "And I can't get the chakra to do the earthy thing! I mean, I can get it to almost , but there's just… something. I don't know. It's like the chakra wants to be earth, but it doesn't want to be earth natured."

Both of them were silent for a bit, allowing him a second to think things over- or maybe to mourn his lost fuuinjutsu supplies? It was hard to know with them. "...Indra, understand that wind release is different from fire or earth release. It doesn't like having a set path, nor appreciate the firm will necessary for earth techniques. It needs to be guided, but not forced . Asura, try using your water and earth affinities together, instead of separately."

"...but wouldn't that make it harder?" Asura was the one who'd asked the question, but it was pretty clear Indra was thinking along the same lines even if he was nominally focusing on his own task. "I mean, I like- having to learn wood and water release at the same time?"

"Not necessarily. I couldn't use earth or wind release separately until after I gained some mastery over my sand. I suspect you have something pretty similar. Try drawing on your chakra-"

"Okay!" Before Shukaku could stop him he yanked on his own internal energies, blasting out a massive shockwave of bluish white energy which had the coincidental duel effects of absolutely ruining any chance of salvaging his fuuinjutsu equipment and blasting the wall off the building. "...uhm-" he looked to a supremely unimpressed Shukaku, and an Indra who'd reached the end of his daily getting-knocked-over -by-Asura patience. "We have a… nice entrance to the courtyard?" Something groaned worryingly in the ceiling above them.

Ah, the puppy eyes. A shame he tried to use them within range of Indra's fun-canceling aura. "You're still in trouble-" and perhaps it was a little funny the way Asura immediately deflated, followed by Indra's lazy eye-roll. Grinning, he flicked out with his tail, sweeping the two of them up into his arms and ruffling Asura's hair. Not Indra's- he hated that, but his presence was comfort enough for the older of the two. "Come on, let's go get father. If we're lucky maybe he'll give us a lesson on chakra, and then we'll really understand elemental natures…" they slipped off into the dim halls of the compound, gently talking about the many myriad natures of chakra, of life and fun, anything and everything.

For now, it was enough.

………

Three years later the Sage of Six Paths sent his progeny on a journey, to select from them his heir. His final words to them before they left were a promise- that no matter what, he would always love them. The disciples bowed low at the end of his speech, and the people of the village lined up to watch them leave- even the bijuu who'd yet to distance themselves more completely came to watch from one of the nearby mountains.

Kurama of all people came- not for Indra, for he could care less, but for Hagoromo's sake. Really, all it had taken was a single request- not even delivered in person- for the kitsune to drop everything and come running. Father's boy indeed.

Generally, though, it was a happy affair- which was why he found it eminently odd to come across Kokuo sobbing in a corner of the Ootsutsuki compound after the speech. They'd both grown a fair bit taller, so as much as he was trying to huddle up in the corner he really took up the whole hall.

He stepped up to him, then paused, not quite sure what to say. Instead, he just laid his tail over Kokuo's back, dragging him into a close hug- an iota of comfort. Kokuo sniffed, then returned the embrace with his five tails- which was unfair in how much better his hugs were. He wasn't the one being comforted. "...kaku'? Wha' you doing here?"

"My brother's crying inconsolably. Where else would I be?"

"With Indra and Asura ." A snarl laced its way into his voice- almost frightening in how much raw emotion suffused the air- grief and anger, faint undertones of betrayal- "you know? The heirs ."

Shukaku frowned in confusion, carefully winding around the bijuu so as to sit by him, side by side. "What's wrong?"

"I- I worked so hard to be heir- and, and I wasn't even given a chance! All Indra and Asura did was get born , and then they were both- both just better . Indra can use all five nature transformation and I can barely even transform my chakra from its elemental nature to an unnatured form- and- and I still can't do the chakra transfer ninshu!" His voice had risen steadily as he rambled until it was a bassy shout, sorrowful and immense. Loud-

Shukaku stepped back, trying his very best to adopt the same serious mask he'd used so often as a child when Kokuo would come to him asking so many, ever various questions. "Try not to worry yourself overmuch about it. Bijuu chakra and reserves make everything difficult-" Kokuo choked out a strangled laugh between his furious tears, because if that wasn't the truest thing to have ever been said then their father wasn't the sage of six paths. "-and, besides, I'm sure there was a reason-"

"They hate us! Father- father doesn't- didn't want ninshu to be about malice and anger, but- but how can I be heir if everyone hates me?"

"They're just afraid-"

" No! " The pure vehemence carried within the sudden wave of killing intent, boosted by the nature of the once-Juubi's chakra was stunning in its intensity. Kokuo clearly felt strongly… sometimes he forgot how much harder his siblings would take the constant wary looks, the silent distancing and subtle distaste- he'd had nineteen years of emotional maturity to buffer him against that- his siblings had been children . "No- they hate us! How can you stand their- them- their looks, like we're rabid animals -" he gasped, voice giving out as he stepped away from Shukaku.

Shukaku softened his face into a gentle frown, wishing he'd mastered his father's gentle cool, or even Asura's exuberant happiness. If only Chomei wasn't molting right then… she'd always been the best of them at cheering them up. "I'm sorry you've had to go through that. The Juubi is a really terrible mom, eh?" His grin was weak-

" Shut up! " Ah, not a time for a smile, if he even could after that. "You- it's not the Juubi - they hate us because they hate us. You tried everything, everything - and now we're here, hidden and hated. You shouldn't try- they don't deserve you to try! I hate them!" He snapped his mouth shut-

Yin and yang. Unconscious, unbalanced, and weak- but a bijuudama, however unfocused, was still enough to blast the entire eastern wing to rubble and burning wood. Eyes wide at the sheer destruction he'd caused, Kokuo took a step back- mouthing some unknowable phrase repetitively in mute horror.

Shukaku reached out slowly, but perhaps he couldn't hide the fear- his disappointment, for that was far worse to his brother- and Kokuo barely gave the hand a glance before bounding away into the mountains with few powerful strides.

He tensed to leap after him, then stilled as a hand- small yet so impossibly strong- grabbed his leg. "Give him some time." Father… he couldn't help but relax in his grounding presence. "Do you think he'll take it well if you came after him right now?"

"...no," and if it was a grudging allowance, then nobody needed to know. "I just wish I wasn't so useless ."

"He'll calm down and talk to you eventually. He's your brother- he'll always love you." A pause- "you're not useless, either. You're prime entertainment for an old man like me!"

Shukaku snorted softly, letting some of the oily-slick tension, that nervous miserability, drain from his body. "Stop pretending to be Hamura, dad. I'm… not in the mood for this right now." He was silent, for a moment staring at the incredible devastation around him and envisioning the same thing a thousand times over in a city for peace between two brothers who'd never war. "They hurt him. My little brother-" he'd be so mad if he'd realized that was how he thought of him. "Those worthless humans- "

He froze.

Worthless humans .

As if he wasn't human-

He wasn't-

A spectral arm of Susanoo enveloped him completely, powerful blue-white chakra embracing him completely and punting away his existential crisis for another time. For a moment, in the ruins of the Ootsutsuki compound- with his father- he allowed himself to just… relax.

………

A year passed, Kokuo nowhere in sight, every attempt to reach out through their shared mindscape rebuffed with extreme prejudice. In retrospect, learning to ignore and avoid problems- read: terrified villagers- since an early age probably hadn't been conducive to perfectly healthy emotional development.

At least he'd escaped those particular maladjustments thanks to his reincarnation, thought Shukaku with no little bit of relief as he avoided the villagers with near-religious fervor.

He'd even managed to avoid that existential crisis! Great times, all around.

………

As he'd expected, Indra was the first of the two to return- a year later yet still perfectly collected as he strode through the village to the mostly repaired Ootsutsuki compound. By the time he'd escaped to Shukaku's domain after being greeted by father, the villagers, and everyone who could had enough strength to stand and gawk, exhaustion was written clearly over his face, faint annoyance hidden in the crease of his eyes. " How Asura manages that-" he sank into a meditative pose on a cushion with all the grace he could for what was essentially a flop- "I will never know."

There was a moment of silence as Shukaku finished the last small line in his slightly adjusted storage seal, stretching uncomfortably long as he placed it off to the side to dry. "It's… an acquired taste. How did the journey go?"

Indra graced him with a look drier than the sands of the wind country wastes. "Given the amount of ridiculous tasks I had to complete, I'm rather confident the 'wandering randomly' part wasn't quite that random at all. Besides that, though, it went rather well."

"Hm?" A clump of sand floated over to the seal before forming into a somewhat wobbly blob as he flicked his tail over to the paper and channeled just a bit of chakra through- and grinned as the entire mass disappeared with the faint thump of displaced air. "Spill, please. I want to know."

"It was either a tragedy of good fortune or a comedy of errors, I know not which- several months into my journey I stumble upon a small village in the wastes flourishing with life. Curious, I ask them to show me the source of their wealth- and they lead me to a seedling of the god tree. "

" What! " The jerk of the brush over his seal and the resulting poof of smoke and fire was suitably dramatic for the moment, he thought.

A soft grin- or, the equivalent for Indra, a small quirk of the lips. "Indeed, my thoughts exactly. Overcome with incredible fear I demanded that they destroy it once, lest they risk the destruction of the world, using my father's title as proof of sincerity. Unfortunately, they took offense to the perceived threat and attacked with lethal force- I managed to restrain them with a small earth technique after developing-" his eyes bled into the lurid red of the sharingan, perfect cool momentarily disturbed with something both grimace and gleeful joy in equal measure- "and destroyed the seedling with a powerful fire technique. Thankfully no ten-tails manifested."

Shukaku hummed in agreement, watching as his third seal sealed the exact same amount of sand as the first. "That would have been… very bad. Still, that couldn't have taken you a year."

"Correct. Additional reconnaissance after the destruction of the seedling revealed a general aura of apathy and despair in the settlement, due to a belief that they would perish of starvation without the localized natural chakra overflow of the seedling. I then proceeded to offer the construction of a well in recompense for my actions, and attempted to use an earth technique-"

"-which failed." Shukaku didn't even need to look up to see the annoyed glare sent his way-

"-yes. Which failed." By the time he'd finished his seal Indra's polite mask was once again emplaced. "I then spent several months meditating on the nature of chakra and control thereof while simultaneously utilizing my… incredibly… limited water techniques to refill the reservoirs. I was actually inspired by your seals for this." Shukaku paused where he'd about to seal another ball of sand away, looking at Indra with sudden intent- watching in careful awe as he flashed through a set of hand seals, chakra contorting in a myriad of basic patterns.

He'd give a lot for proper tenketsu to use those… that would solve so many problems . Well, he had an eternity to get his control up to par. "Very… impressive. Yes. That."

"You sound unimpressed."

"I sound jealous ."

Indra's peal of laughter was as unexpected as it was bright- a sonorous roll of some forgotten bell, as beautiful as he'd remembered. "Chakra control issues, again?"

" You try having a bijuu's reserves one day."

A solemn nod. "Fair enough. Regardless of that matter-" a neat tilt back, just far enough to avoid his tail- "my hand seals ultimately proved adequate for the task, and I dug a two hundred and fifty foot deep well for the villagers over the course a day. I… these hand seals are going to be more important than even the internal chakra manipulation, I think."

Shukaku nodded softly, positioning yet another globe of sand above a seal. "A lot of people are gonna be able to use higher-level techniques because of those. Good job." He could see it- the cities they'd build, the technology- a mechanized world, a soul out of place… wistfully he activated the seal with perhaps a little too much chakra, and suffered the flare of light and snap of sound in return.

It wasn't enough to break Indra's facade, but he could swear those eyes were laughing at him as his bloody sharingan immortalized the memory of him floundering with his sand to put out a fire, and the morose droop of another failed seal.

………

Three months after Indra's return he made a breakthrough with his sealwork- the storage seal wasn't a single character that meant store , but instead an incredibly advanced matrix simplified into a single character over a thousands of years long game of seal telephone. Well, the equivalent of that in a world where proper rice farming was a revolutionary development, at least.

Either way, when he first, finally finished an exploding tag, he felt as if he could cry. Carefully channeling chakra through it, watching the lines light up-

It exploded.

Perfect .

………

One and a half years after Indra's return- just after Indra's twenty second birthday- Asura returned with a gaggle of awed foreigners behind him, and a resolute- if perhaps a bit intimidated- woman by his side. He wove a tale almost eerily similar to Indra's- a sapling of the god tree, and a well dug, this time through sheer grit and community effort rather than genius techniques.

The two brothers reunited on rather amicable terms, even if they lived more separately- Indra in the compound, and Asura with the villagers. Indra's hand seals even managed to do the impossible-make Asura somewhat, passably, a little bit decent with chakra techniques. Well, at the very least he didn't blow things up with unrestrained chakra blasts anymore.

Indra was distant- but that was normal enough, and Shukaku was far too busy basking in the fact his newfound seal barely-competency that actually allowed him to talk with a few brave humans to prod his antisocial little brother into human interaction.

A shame Kanna- Asura's wife- the woman he'd brought back from his journey- seemed to fear him so much. She was such a nice woman otherwise… two years passed with little interaction with Asura- either brother in truth, but that was fine . It was, and he'd keep telling him that until it stuck.

He knew Shukaku's story. He had a lot of hope it'd go differently- but still… it was probably a good skill for a monster like him to have.

Two years, one month, and fourteen days after Asura returned to the compound, Ootsutsuki Hagoromo, the Sage of Six Paths, proclaimed his heir to the ways of ninshu and the domain of peace: his son, Ootsutsuki Asura.

………

Shukaku stumbled- almost literally- across Indra in one of the back hallways to his little warren.. "I… I don't know what to feel about it." Scarlet sharingan met his golden eyes, a scowl etched onto a normally placid face. "I knew this was coming- my techniques are good, but Asura was always the people person. He makes a good heir. He's my brother. I still feel…"

"Betrayed?"

"...yeah. How'd you know?" It must be a bit worse than he'd thought, the very personification of pose and composition sounded that worn.

Shukaku wrapped his tail around the boy, tugging him into an embrace. "Feelings can be illogical. Your older brother Son Goku felt betrayed when Isobu left to explore the oceans, even though he didn't really have the right to decide that for him. Matatabi probably felt betrayed by your mother's death-"

Indra chuckled softly, voice just a bit raspy. "Oh shut it , you tanuki-shaped ball of sand. I'm not a four year old - I understand that emotions exist."

"Really? I always thought your blank-face mask was for when you forgot!"

" Tanuki-shaped ball of sand ." He leaned into the embrace, the tension draining out of his body faint, but noticeable. "My gratitude for putting things in perspective. I'm proud for my brother- and that's all that matters." A faint hint of red crept on the tips of his ears- very faint, but Shukaku could read Indra like a particularly well written book. "I still find myself compelled to take a small retreat- perhaps back to the village I saved- to distance myself from the excitement, and perhaps develop a few new techniques. Not that I don't want to be here, but-"

"Sometimes you just want to be alone. I understand. Just remember that we're always here for you." He set him down on the floor, exerting the utmost maximum of his fine control to brush off most of the sand. "Have fun, little brother."

"I won't be gone forever- and I don't plan on going alone. There's two rather dogged followers of mine who I think would appreciate the chance to learn from me, and I'd be able to increase my… people skills." The grimace on his face at the last two words was enough to make Sukaku laugh out loud, clutching his stomach as the low, hysterical rumbles echoed down austere corridors and overgrown gardens. "...I know. You don't have to rub it in." He smiled- a real, true smile like Shukaku hadn't seen from him in an age- "goodbye, Shukaku. I'll be back, one day."

Shukaku watched him stride away through the dark halls, robes fluttering dramatically in a wind release he'd clearly used for purely theatrical reasons, and daydreamed of fantastical futures and petty hopes.

………

The Sage of Six Paths should have been immortal. There was something incredibly wrong, he thought, standing in a vast underground chamber, nine young bijuu standing in a ring around their dying creator, about his father passing away. The Sage of Six Paths should have lived forever, bringing peace and hope to a mourning world. The Sage of Six Paths shouldn't have been able to die- but Ootsutsuki Hagoromo, the mortal, could die of a simple cold and a bit of chakra exhaustion. If he hadn't sent Hamura that letter with his rinnegan…

A shaft of moonlight lit the chamber in shimmering pearlescent white, gleaming off the cold stone floor. Hagoromo smiled, faintly- a tug of his lips as rinnegan amaranthine met his mother's grave. "...children." The bijuu shuffled closer, eyes wet with unshed tears. They'd all come for this last moment- the others had already said their farewells, but here- at the end of legend, they were all that remained. "I'm sorry… that I couldn't do more for you. Know… know that even if they did… I never, could never hate you…"

"You were the best father we could have asked for." Kurama stepped forward, pressing his nose against Hagoromo's side, followed by each of the others as they offered their final words- their final thanks, for the life he'd given them and the love he'd lavished upon them. "I- we- we love you, will always remember you… …goodbye."

" Gamamaru gave me a… prophecy, once. About a gold-haired kid, and blue eyes. But… don't worry about the future." His eyes locked with Shukaku for a long moment, so pained- yet still as bright as he'd ever seen. "Live… well. Enjoy the peace I've made for you my… my children." He coughed, specks of blood staining his once-white robe, chakra visibly flickering as he summoned the strength to fold his hands atop his chest. "Remember… please, remember… I will always love you."

The Sage of Six Paths closed his eyes to the poignant words of a man who'd yet to live, the words Shukaku had used over and over again, and Shukaku wept. For a man who'd meant everything to him, who'd given him hope and truth, comfort and the stability of knowing there had always been someone he could go to, someone who shared his fears and hopes-

As his gudodama faded, black orbs crumbling to dust and so much shining light, he wept for a world without its savior. He wept for a world without his father.

The Sage of Six Paths died as he lived- in peace.

For nine immortals, time moved ever onwards.

………

Ootsutsuki Indra did not attend the funeral.Lines in the SandChapter 4: Brothers' War

Summary:

A soft weight settled lithely atop his head, uncharacteristically still. "I'm here. Shukaku, Shuku, Shuku-" he hadn't heard that name in ages, as two hands gripped onto his sand with manic strength. "I… I could barely get most of them to safety in time… it's all destroyed. The compound… the compound worst of all- there's nothing left there." Asura's body shook softly with his sobs. "Who could do this? Who could be such a monster?"

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

The compound felt remarkably different without his father's presence- lighter, yet more distant. It wasn't any one thing- he'd expected most of them, but it still hurt when Kanna would look at him with barely disguised coldness, at the sand he sometimes tracked in with animal disgust. Fuuinjutsu lessons with the villagers slowly dried up, and using a brush had become so unwieldy as to be near impossible.

The hallways were too small for him, now. Only his warren, so carefully hewn from the mountainside, was large enough to fit him comfortably.

He felt like an outsider in a home he'd lived in longer than them. For all his conviction to remain with the humans, as the seasons cycled it faded to but two reasons- Asura's love, and the expectation of Indra's return.

Without the Sage, with his other siblings scattered-

Alone.

He was so, so alone.

………

Screams woke him.

Screams and the roar of fire, shrill echoes of crumbling wood and the painfully powerful hum of directed chakra- killing intent - permeating the air. Shukaku woke up with a gasp and a roar, throwing himself out of his warren with the jerky lethargy of sleep disrupted. There was something so terrible, disgustingly wrong about the feeling suffusing the air- anguish and sickening rage, pride and sorrow.

It asked him to die, and he laughed in its face as the Juubi's nature spilled out into the air around him, unending rage just as potent. A single, powerful leap threw him up a small hilltop, beyond which he could see- the village!

A smoking ruin, burning with black flames that felt- ancient, powerful. As if the things they burnt had always been burnt, just waiting for their inevitable immolation. Disgust and horror, and rage - pooled in the bottom of his chest, and he desperately searched for who'd done this. " Asura! " Black flames, black flames- there was something about that, if only he could remember . "Where are you-" no, please- he begged, but what god was there to beg to? He was the Ichibi, the Sage was dead, and in this moment he felt less than useless. "Ausra! Where-"

A soft weight settled lithely atop his head, uncharacteristically still. "I'm here. Shukaku, Shuku, Shuku-" he hadn't heard that name in ages , as two hands gripped onto his sand with manic strength. "I… I could barely get most of them to safety in time… it's all destroyed . The compound… the compound worst of all- there's nothing left there." Asura's body shook softly with his sobs. "Who could do this? Who could be such a monster? "

"I don't…" he frowned, watching the black flames flicker and consume. There was something familiar about them- they'd been an important attack in the future, he was sure. Itachi's attack-

An Uchiha mangekyou ability.

The pit of horror in his chest bloomed to an ugly suspicion, a terrified dread- he had changed things. He had suffered- daily, under the weight of suspicious stares- he'd shown him love, and been loved in return. There was little he'd been more certain of.

A small figure stepped out of the forest across the village, and the bloodlust in the air thickened as they stared out over the burning village. Shaggy locks streaked with ash and blood . Fists clenched- the figure's and Shukaku dared not look into his eyes for fear of what he'd see.

Asura was not so lucky. The hitch in his voice, the painful cry- " Indra! Why- why are you doing this?" Shukaku winced, rubbing at his ears. Chakra enhanced shouting was loud . "What- have you gone mad? This isn't peace- this isn't ninshu !"

"Ninshu is weak." Cold. It wasn't just a mask, anymore, and something in Shukaku crumbled at the sound of that sneering voice- "the Sage of Six Paths picked the wrong son- I will- I have the strength to guard us against ourselves. Observe the mastery of- of the true heir!" A bewildering chain of hand seals flickered by- "fire release: darkling smoke!" A swirl of smoke billowed out of nowhere, thick and dark, billowing like black flames. A second passed, faint purple light beginning to throb within it-

Perhaps feeling Shukaku's worry, Asura flickered through a few hand seals, summoning an immense gust of wind. "I won't let you do this…" it was barely more than a whisper- for himself, but Shukaku heard it nonetheless.

He wondered if crushing guilt could kill a bijuu.

The last vestiges of smoke dissipated, revealing a hulking figure of purple flames, bound in armor and dark flames-

A roar of chakra, almost as strong as his own, and the figure shifted to something more. "Complete body: Susanoo." It towered over them- almost as tall as he'd be in the future. Mountains looked puny against its form. "You are nothing against me, Asura. You are too weak to rule."

" Never !" Oh. Asura's killing intent was… like the burning of sun, a dream of children mourning lost parents, a crushing guilt- that to attack him was to attack the sun. Pointless in the extreme. "Wood art: binding of the Shinju!" Cacophonies of shifting wood and breaking earth filled the village as the forests flexed, groaning as the bedrock beneath the village shuddered and broke. Asura shifted to a battle stance, the forests stilling as two beasts faced one another- and then the roots broke the surface, hundred-foot thick immensities which speared out toward Indra's perfect Susanoo.

" Weak ." A blade chopped down, splitting a root in two like so much tinder. "You're foolish if you believe this will go any way but one- my eyes see your death-" and a blow of Susanoo's wings sent him flying into the air, swords outreached in deadly grace even.

" Move! " Shukaku moved, bounding away from the blow that rent a mountain in two and leveled what remained of the village. Indra leapt after them again, swords flashing in a dance of terrible grace as he wrecked devastation across the landscape. "We need to keep free-"

" You cannot escape me! " There was something… manic, in the depth of his voice- "You… Asura-" and that momentary pause was all he needed, thick bindings of roots enveloping his Susanoo in a deadly embrace. Asura clenched a fist, and the roots squeezed - but the perfect Susanoo withstood even that crushing force. A choking sound drifted across the space between them… and it was only after looking into the construct's flaming eyes that Shukaku realized Indra was laughing . "How… how weak." It felt like a sob. What could have changed him so much? "Your strength is insufficient , little brother."

Shukaku settled his mind, trying desperately not to remember, memories of a cute little ever curious boy floating to the top of his consciousness. Grief and anger and clinical sorrow prickled at the edge of his mind he set it aside, focusing-

Eight parts yang.

Two parts yin.

Rotating, as if the world spun on his command, dizzyingly dense chakra that seemed to pull the very essence of nature around it in swirling eddies.

Bite down.

Shukaku opened his mouth and blasted Indra with a bijuudama.

It felt like the end of the world- if Susanoo's strikes had the strength to cleave mountains, then this would disintegrate them. The air thrummed as an incandescent beam of chakra slashed through Asura's wood like so much wet paper, gouging a deep line through the construct's face and forcing the Susanoo to a knee. Purple chakra fought in vain to fight off the binding roots, seconds- mere moments of weakness, yet still enough to pin his Susanoo to the ground.

Wood swept underneath him in a wave, raising him and Asura to eye-level with the Susanoo. "Can…" a shuddering breath, in sorrow or rage he couldn't tell. If they were even so separate to begin with… "can you do that again?"

There was no need to respond- instead he gathered his chakra with furious determination, shunting stray thoughts to the back of his mind. Once, one last time he stared into the kneeling body of his brother trapped within the construct, and sighed. It was never supposed to come to this.

The bijuudama fired-

Yet the beam only sliced through air. There was nothing to hit.

Indra was gone.

………

Asura sat at the edge of their miserable little camp, eyes puffy too red, many tears etching their long trails down his cheeks. The ground beneath them had been trampled into a sticky mud by the desperate flight of the villagers, and the smattering of tents, hammocks, and just… people… weren't that much cleaner. "Do you know why he did it?"

"No." His voice rumbled quietly through the forest, shocking birds off their perches, catching on the edge of its own sorrow. "I don't know why. I… he wasn't the sort of person to do something like this."

"It was just… such an about face in behavior. He was always cold, but never cruel ." A sigh escaped Asura as he leaned into his shifting sand, letting the shaken, woody solidity of his chakra touch against the vastness of an empty desert sky. Somewhere in the distance the sound of gentle sobs intermingled with birdsong and dripping water. Peaceful- but not a different kind of peace than the Sage's. The breath of air after a battle… "How could he have changed so much in just a few years, Shukaku? How can I get my brother back? "

In those words, he dreamed of a terrible world, and in that dream remembered a quiet child who'd pestered endlessly for help with his techniques. "I don't know, Asura." The man beside him slouched, slightly, looking as old as his father- a weariness beyond mere physicality. "I don't know, Asura, but we can try ."

………

Two months passed quickly. The traitor didn't return to attack them other than the occasional long-distance jutsu, yet the lines were nevertheless drawn- it felt as if the whole world had been overturned atop itself. Fields burned as they passed, their little grouping of ninshu disciples- ninjutsu practitioners - grew after every village.

A crowd, then an army, then… then a world at war. Two months- that was all it took for the first battles to start flaring up between the brothers' followers- first by strength of mortal arms, then in fire and elemental destruction.

Two months after the betrayal, Kurama spoke to him in the mindscape for the first time in years. The tug came in a muddy pass between rain and earth country- nothing more than a light touch on the edge of his subconscious, an inherent knowledge that one of his siblings was tugging on the bond between them. Carefully tucking his sealing work out of the rain, he let himself be dragged into the depths of their shared mindscape.

"Shukaku." Some faint expression- distaste, or disgust- curled the edge of his lips as he looked across the vast emptiness to meet his eyes.

"Kurama."

"You idiot! Damned fool- you're messing with stuff you shouldn't, and it's only going to end poorly for everyone involved."

Shukaku narrowed his eyes, scowl etched deeply across his face. "Stuff? Stuff ? Indra destroyed the village- he destroyed the compound we grew up in in his insanity. Asura's your brother, and our father's heir. This is your family that's fighting too."

A terrible silence stretched between them as Kurama lashed his tails behind him, glower fixed on his face and ears pressed flat against his head. "...Indra and Asura are no brothers of mine." If they could use killing intent in this space made of the Juubi's remnant connection, then Shukaku's would have been cloyingly thick. "My only family was the sage and the siblings he made."

"You'll regret this, in the future." As soon as he said it, he knew he'd regret it later- but he was angry. So furious at the foolish, shortsighted beings, so much angrier at the humans who'd pushed their family, their greatest protectors apart. "You'll look back, and remember the brothers who'd loved you, and think- if only you'd done more to keep them safe-"

Kurama lunged at him with a furious roar, but he'd already slipped free from the mindscape- back to rain, like so many falling tears iridescently beautiful…

………

The first major battle took place between Indra's elite and Asura's main force in earth country, an ambush turned to bloody conflict. The battle itself was light and fire, sparkling lightning and pure elemental manipulation, rockslides and explosions. The seals he'd drawn lit the sky with scarlet staccato sounds- as above in light, so the blood slicked off every surface, rivulets of crimson liquid spilling onto the rocks in an unending tithe. Screams… the screams were terrible- worse than the mangled bodies of the fallen.

He cared little for humans, now, beyond those he'd named family… but the screams- in each one he could hear his two younger brothers- his older sister, father not father, school-children- memories.

Afterwards, as they mourned the dead and gathered their strength against further attacks, Asura gave a solemn speech from a craggy outcrop above their army. Wreathed by the same flowering trees who'd choked the life from their enemies, blood yet dripping from the end of his staff.

He called them shinobi- they who endure- and Shukaku couldn't help but think of a village hidden in the leaves, a brother bound and hope that felt infinitely far out of grasp.

Despite it all, it was a good speech.

………

"-and then Aki was all like- whoa, these pieces of paper are super awesome, who made them? And I said- Shukaku- and then they were like, who's Shukaku?" He threw up his hands in mock indignation, a scowl dripped down his face- but it was far more like his childhood petulancy than the tearful fury he had on the battlefield. "And I pointed at you-" he was over a hundred feet tall now, so he tended to stick out a bit on the battlefield. Great for stomping people, but fine fuuinjutsu was all but impossible. "They were like, what! The Ichibi made those?"

Shukaku grinned softly- it was nice, he thought- to have this little bit of Asura's innocence remain. "I bet if you told them you were my brother they'd flip ."

"I did - back when we were kids, and they were just confused. Kept asking how someone could have given birth to something that large." His scowl faded to a dopey grin, and Shukaku matched it with a tentative smile of his own. Childhood memories… in this morass of death and burning fields, at least he had his memories to draw on. "...yeah, and then one of the tag makers even backed me up! Have you thought up any new designs yet- we need them, to fight against Indra's ridiculous jutsu."

It wasn't much of a secret that Indra's shinobi were better than theirs. If they were overwhelmed in a battle- illusory clones. Trapped? Body replacement technique with some poor, unfortunate rock. "Unfortunately not. Most of the equipment sized for me was lost, and I use something along the lines of… ten times the amount of ink for the same results. It's just not practical."

Asura looked at him, eyes more imploring than a lost puppy drowning in tears of adorability. "But the explosive tags are so cool! We could like… blow stuff up! With explosions-"

Shukaku pressed a palm onto his head, trying and failing to ignore the random drivel pouring from Asura's mouth. Sometimes, he made it really hard to see the confident warrior, the leader with his rousing speeches and unending determination. Still, they'd met to talk about something important. "...how are the talks going?"

"I'm… I'm not sure." Eyes darkened as his exuberance recoiled into itself. The subject of Indra tended to do that. "He seems… receptive, but hesitant. The messengers talk about mood swings between excitement and enough distaste directed toward them they can feel his killing intent." Mood swings. Not for the first time, Shukaku wondered if Indra had just… hit his head on a rock somewhere. Indra with mood swings . The mere thought bewildered and amused hin in equal measure. "I… I was thinking that maybe he wants someone familiar. I-"

"You want to go." Asura nodded in relief- " Absolutely not. Nope, not a chance . You're the most important person alive , little brother. It'd be all too easy for his assassins to just… stick a knife in you. Then you're dead, if I have to spell that out." It was hard to articulate how much the idea terrified him.

The fire before them crackled, casting its flickering shadows across the faint depression Asura made in his sand, a small embrace. Warm. "You worry too much… it needs to be me. Look-" the camp spread out before them, thousands of similar fires speckling the vast plain like so many stars, a city of dirty tents and weary soldiers. Wounded shinobi clustered at the center, cared for as best they could by the noncombatants, an air of weary determination settled over the entire place. "They need this to end, and I don't think Indra will listen to anyone but his brother."

"Gamamaru has been pestering you into learning sage arts recently, right? A ceasefire would be a good time to learn."

"Yes, but- I'm his brother ."

Shukaku's tail rustled softly as it wrapped around Asura, embracing him so lovingly tight. "It's a good thing that Indra has more than one brother, then, isn't it?"

………

They met together on the fringes of lightning country, towering mountains rising solemn behind them, winter-clad heath spread behind them. Sentinel peaks, their barren shadows stretching long and level over their meeting place as the sun set, their cold winds whipping at his sand and setting Indra's cloak aflutter.

They were alone.

There was nothing around them- the area had been a battlefield in the recent past, but beneath the blanket of downy snow the land appeared… empty. Blank- but for the mountains, it could have been a void of white and sky, clouds and ice. " Shukaku ." Some faint emotion laced those words- mocking, perhaps in the arrogant languor Indra carried himself with, or wrath, or madness. "I wondered who'd they send to kill me."

"I don't think I could ever bring myself to kill you."

"Obviously." He scoffed, eyes narrowing ever so slightly- "You are incapable of killing me, Ichibi. My complete body: Susanoo is beyond even your bijuudama, and I have only improved since we last faced one another."

"Huh… uh, let me rephrase that." He sat, and for all he towered over his brother, he still felt the intimidating weight of Indra's chakra press down on the air around them. If it came to a confrontation, he was reasonably certain he could escape, but… it would be a very destructive battle. "I'm not here to kill you."

"Really?" He murmured something too quiet to catch, scuffing his feet on the snow for a second before relaxing back into his languid arrogance. "I've heard reports of your mastery over sand. Tidal waves as tall as mountains, crushing tombs for thousands of shinobi at once." A flicker- a cruel smile- across his face. "You make a very good monster."

"The seal tags are my work too."

A soft chuckle escaped Indra. "You… you always said you'd be amazing at fuuinjutsu, and…" he started to pace, snow crunching softly beneath his weight- "You… father- father always liked you the best. I saw it- you said you loved me-" he sounded so forlorn- in that moment, Shukaku knew he was insane. No matter how hard he'd tried-

"What happened?" He hated how exhausted he sounded in that moment. "What happened on your journey?." He just wanted to know where he'd gone wrong, for history to follow the course of fate…

Standing on a bed of freshly trampled snow, robes snapping in a fierce wind, he looked every part the tyrant he'd set out to become. "I was enlightened to my own worth. The depth of my father's treachery… my… I-" a sleeved hand reached up to clutch at his head, pained grimace written clearly across his features. The moment his fingers brushed the side of his head, he slouched in obvious relief. "I- it was stolen . Mine, mine mine mine- stolen, yes. Yes it was- no, my brother, my brother… it was stolen from me." He craned his neck to see, eye to eye, for a moment looking so lost and hurt, the expression on his face something that wouldn't have been out of place when he was four. "You… you saw me. You saw father's… and you still sided with Asura- " the name was spat like a curse- "you… you betrayed me, Shukaku."

Shukaku just mutely bowed his head, catching a last glimpse of his brother. There would be no reasoning with whatever had turned him into this-

"Wait!" The hopeful, slightly broken- desperate tone of the voice froze him in his tracks, and he looked back to Indra. He looked… pale- no. Afraid. Determined. Tears clutched at the edge of his eyes- "this… I'm sorry, but this is what you deserve, traitor -" tears of blood - " mangyekou sharingan! " A darkness, pearly grin far, far too wide as those eyes, enrapturing eyes pulled him in with grace so terrible.

He called the shadow Zetsu-

And all he could see-

Were spinning-

Pinwheels-

Of-

Red.Chapter 5: World of Ash

Summary:

When Shukaku woke to the biting winds of a wind country sandstorm, he remembered all he'd lost, and could not weep. His family was dead, and he had run out of tears.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Worlds of red. Tomoe, whirring in endless revolutions, time falling inwards on itself as it bowed to the king of gods. Gods, gods… there were no gods- only omnidirectional kaleidoscope of pinwheels and scarlet pulling at his mind, tearing-

So much pain.

Blood? Was it his?

No… he did not bleed, not anymore, not since his name had changed from- to Shukaku. Ichibi. Monster. Monster .

Worlds of red.

Tomoe.

Spinning.

Pain .

Revolutions, repeating, actions again and again as he slowly clawed at consciousness, never able to catch more than a glimpse of his surroundings- and what terrible glimpses they were. The control technique was incredibly refined- par for the course of one of Zetsu's students, he supposed in his delirious humor.

Sadistic… oh, it was such a sadistic technique. If only he could cry within this hellscape of spinning eyes, he would weep. When Indra would sleep he could feel the touch of mania as the illusion frayed, terrible memories bleeding through in mangekyo perfect recall- always, always wrapping around to a single flickering flash of two men with lightning-clad fists through their chest.

He thought their eyes the most haunting of it all- so impossibly wide with betrayal, so massive from Indra's all too human perspective. It made them feel… real . Then that final memory would burn away on a tide of red, and he'd see a thousand flashes of a sword carving, blood- arterial offerings painting patterns in abstract across a thousand scorched battlefields.

Waking was the worst of it. Everyday without fail they'd trudge through battlefield after battlefield, insidious hooks drawing him forth, single purpose focus for destruction layered atop him in choking sheets until only mindless animal intelligence remained.

He hadn't realized how human he'd been behaving until it was stripped away from him- jagged slides, slashing, tearing, biting and shredding with the texture of blood and flesh on his tongue… The control would always loosen just after he committed whatever crime Indra's mangekyou prodded him into- for the sake of practicality, letting Indra recover while he was too exhausted to do more than stare- or just to be cruel.

The moments after a bijuudama, while the air still hummed with released power, watching ash and fire rain down from an enemy encampment, a village, caravan, refugee, parents, families , children- the children, he saw the children… He wished he could be something more than a curse

All his vaunted knowledge, and he'd forgotten the one thing truly important. He hated himself for thinking- if only his father could see him, save him, bind Zetsu like he'd bound Kaguya… for wishing he was anywhere else but here.

His family was here-

Family had failed him though, hadn't it? He'd failed them.

A fool, a fool, and the damnable genjutsu latched onto those self-deprecating thoughts, repeating it over and over again in whispers at the edge of sanity.

The years passed quickly, but to him… it felt like an eternity.

He understood Sasuke a little better now, he thought in those half-hysterical moments of almost-lucidity. If this was what it means to truly hate- to wish his brother dead with every fiber of his form, to love him so deeply and want to see him bleed .

He only wished…

Powerless, he could only wish.

………

Indra and Asura fought often, each clash more and more titanic than the last. Ironically, as much as Shukaku augmented Indra's sheer destructive power, he also held him back from securing a decisive victory over Asura. He was too much of a liability in a battle between the two- and the strain of maintaining his control over a long distance held Indra back from simply overwhelming his brother.

The first time he witnessed a fight between Asura and Indra, a massive trench was carved into the ground by his Susanoo, lit aflame with Amaterasu, and overgrown with immense jungle in the span of thirty minutes.

The second time, Indra nearly killed Asura with the overwhelming use of Hinokagutsuchi, a massive wave of Amaterasu's flame that burnt an immense gash into earth country. The third time they met, the same strategy failed against Asura's amenomihashira, his life only just saved by a quick lightning jutsu that smashed the spinning sphere aside.

Despite the control, Shukaku smiled bitterly. He could almost see Naruto and Sasuke imposed in double over the two, rasengan and chidori instead of thunder that cracked the earth and a… well, Asura's attack was really just rasengan with five more rasengan stuffed inside of it. Rasengan but better.

One day, they would be more powerful than this, and their enemies even more powerful than that.

As the mountains crumbled around him and the sky bled orange-black beneath the flames of burning forests and melting rock, Shukaku pondered fate, inevitability, and weakness. The genjutsu laughed at him as it tugged him back under those layers of comforting, disgusting animal rage, whispering- a fool. A fool.

………

The years grew long beneath the weight of those terrible, terrible eyes. Battles were meaningless- as blood, all but the waters of life and death slicking off his sand and dripping, in forlorn trails to the ground below. Most combat was solved rather one-sidedly- the faint hum of building chakra, felt beneath even beneath those awful bindings , a beam of light and a flicker of whatever he'd destroyed seared across his sight in eternal memory.

In the first few years, he committed those smoking ruins to memory- for the one who would never die, and thus could never forget their tradgedy. Later, he just couldn't bring himself to care. Humans were, after all, merely human .

A second flash of memory was added to the nightime nightmares, a woman with inky black hair and haunted eyes, flashes of manic love and terror. Sometimes, when he strained against the compulsions, he felt the acrid bitter pull of disappointment that Indra could love someone else and not him . They'd been family…

Some time later, a year at least, or an eternity, the dreams changed again, a black-haired infant cradled in her arms.

Later, another, and a toddler about their feet- and for all he hated, he still let the faint edge of happiness brush across him at the sight of their tiny faces.

Third, another child, and an eight year-old with bloody red eyes, swirling and swirling in maddening circles. Cold, viscous mask affixed perfectly to his face, weapons clenched tightly.

A red and white fan, scarlet on the scarlet of blood- emblazoned where there had once been nine black tomoe. The Uchiha were born to a wounded world.

Last, the woman again in stark relief, silhouetted against the crash of lightning on a stormy sky- a sword through her chest.

………

When Asura's battles with Indra changed from ideological debate to brutal malice- when Asura stopped trying to get Indra to change his mind and Indra only ever escalated, Shukaku knew they weren't going to save him.

So he started working to save himself.

………

The first thing he did was take stock of the situation- the compulsion was tight . Multilayered, almost to the point of making him thoughtless. It was a mangekyou ability, though, so it was kept as weak as possible at all times in order to reduce stress on the eyes. He shivered at the thought of where he'd be if he didn't know all about the dojutsu beforehand through the nature of his incarnation…

Resisting directly was futile- the genjutsu puppeteered him quite effectively indeed. His mental resistance wasn't quite strong enough to stand up to the mangekyou sharingan , even at its weakest, so that left hiding a few actions during those moments of near-autonomy.

A routine attack against Asura's encampments allowed him to test his primary theory, struggling to shift the smallest iota of his sand as he charged a bijuudama. As the shockwave blasted back the clouds and shattered the earth, he felt his sand move an inch to the right.

As he'd suspected- he was still able to use chakra- the genjutsu wasn't strong enough to let him throw bijuudama at their enemies without also allowing him to use it elsewhere.

Mental chains reached out to drag him back to unthinking wrath, yet still the faintest exhilaration remained-

It was a start.

………

Moving sand was easy. Moving it finely enough to manage something that could disrupt Indra's control was hard indeed. By the time an opportunity presented itself Indra dreamed only of lightning, and a world of ash.

………

Apocalyptic.

Shukaku came to awareness in fits as the battle progressed, the crash of rain sleeting off his sand- flickering lightning cascading against him and illuminating the night. A bijuudama that smashed into the side of an immense boar, exploding it into a gout of blood of viscera. The keening death-cry of a serpent, pocketed with broken scales and pitted craters oozing blood, flickering purple swords skewered through its side.

The rumble of explosions- screams, shouting and the clamor of metal on metal as the earth ruptured beneath them-

A sea of blood, blood red eyes swirling in his vision, pulling him under-

Wading through a tide of brutal combat, chakra enhancement refined until each clash of kunai on steel looked elegant, a jagged, twirling insanity swept away by the rush of his tail. Swept away against the naked fear directed towards him, the terrified glares of sorrowful wrath directed his way as shinobi fled beneath his claws, directed against the blood dripping from the chinks in his tail so scarlet red.

Pinwheels spun, patterns tracing beneath his skin-

Mindless, blank rage.

A massive lizard crashed into him from the side, throwing him to the ground- a moment of clarity, then he was building a bijuudama and caving the beast's ribs in with a brutal strike of his tail. Hooks- those mental…

The bijuudama splattered its brains against the ground to be washed away with the rest of the blood and gore- beneath the pounding rain, the tears of heaven. Strobing lights illuminated the silhouettes of mountains for a single moment- if only for the soldiers to watch them crumble.

For Shukaku to see the futility of his strength. How far from the truly powerful he stood.

Just as he stormed a particularly annoying pair of humans who'd been using some sort of chain-puppeteering jutsu in a- feeble- attempt to bind him, the genjutsu set upon his mind with a vengeance. A rumbled groan of pain escaped him as thought-

Held.

He held- against-

A pair of feet settled neatly atop his head, calm- purple chakra exploding out of their form as Shukaku felt his mind burn, a sea of blood dripping down from those eternally whirling mangekyou sharingan. Skeletal limbs burst out of nothing to mirror his own, flesh growing atop it, armor in pieces and binding force-

Wings burst from the purple construct and were subsumed in an instant, everything tightening around until it felt… whole, stable. Armored in Indra's complete body: Susanoo, he felt more in control of himself than he had in years.

Indra commanded something in the subtle language of his control, and Shukaku leapt into the air with enough force to blast a crater beneath him. For a brief moment he could see the entire scope of the battlefield. Uncountable pinpricks of light mixed with the continuous roar of thunder and explosions, vast shadows like beasts winding their way against one another in brutal combat.

As he plummeted toward a ring of blank emptiness in the center of the immense conflict, the only thing he could think of was that- so high above them- he couldn't hear them.

"Indra! How dare you! " A fiery fury was present in Asura's that hadn't been there before, energetic excitement shattered and remade into this… this perverse, broken shadow. "Was killing Kanna not enough for you? Do you have to see everything I loved destroyed?"

"No." Indra sounded… older. " You destroy everything you love-" what absolute bullshit , but Shukaku could only stare as Asura internalized it, reflecting the blame inwards on himself. "It never had to be this way, but you were too greedy, aspiring beyond your station. In doing so, you have condemned all of yourself to death." Shukaku wished he could laugh, laugh and cry against the bitterness wrapped up in his chest. He and Asura were a lot alike at that moment. They both blamed themselves.

"You won't… won't get away with this! "

Though he stood atop his head, he could almost see the cold, disinterested glare Indra leveled at Asura. "You mistake the Ichibi's presence for some simple act of emotion . No… together, we are unstoppable. " Tears cut lines in the ash on Asura's cheek as he breathed deeply, slowly standing from his meditative pose.

When he opened his eyes, they were brilliant gold. "Sage art wood release: true several thousand hands!" A sea of vines burst from the scorched ground around them, twining together in an instant's intricate dance of incredibly fine control as a truly monumental statue constructed itself from wood before them. "Wood release: World of Blossoms!"

"Amaterasu!" Black flames danced across the sea of trees, washing against the immense wooden construct uselessly as the valley burnt down around them. Indra, however, didn't need something so banal as words to command Shukaku, and a bijuudama flashed through the air in the same moment, shattering the entire right half of the construct.

Then there were hands.

The technique's name, uninspired as it might be, was incredibly accurate. Everything was hands . The hands were hands, the air was hands, in every direction there were hands . They pounded into him in an unending rain of blows that tore at his Susanoo, landing against him no matter how deftly Indra smashed them aside with his blades.

Sukaku had to admit, it was a very Asura sort of technique. Can't hit a blademaster who always dodges? Just throw enough attacks that they start getting through.

Still hurt, though. A roar bubbled out of his throat as the blows pummeled him, and in return he lashed out with his tail, smashing a hundred hands in a single blow. A spear of lightning shot out somewhere over his shoulder with the sound of a thousand stereos dying in anguished pain- a bolt of light and afterimages sheared off to the side of Asura's amenomihashira.

Sand swept up from the pulverized earth just in time to block the five inner spheres from blasting him backwards-

Sand.

He could move his sand again .

Even as Indra leapt into the sky with blinding flare of Sunsanoo's fire, Shukaku's attention was solely on the genjutsu's loosening bonds. A desperate scrabble- just a little more, against his chakra, against all the sharingan in his mind that cried endless waterfalls of blood.

Sand rose shakily around them, sickly and dominating in Susanoo's unnatural shadows- seething, twisting inwards on itself in grotesque patterns until a perfect shell of dust hung around himself and Indra.

A complete shield.

Wood splintered, cracking beneath Indra's scything blows, wood human technique falling apart-

Something screamed against his mind, but he refused it- he'd come too far to fail now. The sands twisted in eerie synchronicity- once more, terrible patterns falling into a single alignment repeated uncountable times across its surface.

An explosive seal.

The world drowned, subsumed in sound and flames. For a single eternal moment a sun shone at night, scattered incandescence reflected in every raindrop like so many glittering stars, vaporizing against the scintillating heat of roiling chakra transformed to fire in the breadth of a moment.

Susanoo cracked, and was swept away on that sudden immolation.

Wood cracked and smoldered.

Sharingan control broke.

A clawed hand grasped the edge of a crater as Shukaku pulled himself out to the sight of Indra and Asura opposite each other, chakra seething beneath their skin. Indra glanced at him-

Shukaku didn't spare time for thought. Didn't let sudden absence of those beguiling whispers and screaming barbs phase him, refused to allow those myriad memories stay his hand as the sands wrapped tightly around Indra. "Sand Coffin." His voice was a bijuu's deep rumble, and he couldn't help but marvel at how inhuman it was. He didn't let the absolute surety of how much this would hurt, hurt Asura , stop him. Denial was a worthless waste of time when held his brother's life in his hands. He clenched a fist. " Sand burial. "

His brother's body contorted into shattered shapes and- blood-

So died Ootsutsuki Indra as he lived, in betrayal.

The battleground was quiet, now, as Asura looked at him with such an awfully broken expression. "Why? Why? You were his brother!"

"I still am." He couldn't quite parse the exhaustion he felt, but perhaps Asura saw it as he glanced away, rage trembling in clenched fists. "This… it went on too long. It could only end in death."

"Then you know what happens next." Cold. Shukaku stared up in drowsy shock roots speared up from the ground, writhing around his form. It had been too long, far too long if Asura could manage a cold voice. "I love you, Shukaku, but… but this war erodes even fond memories, you know? With father, and me pestering you, and Indra always being like 'ah, so cool-'" His voice choked- "the bijuu are weapons, and you are one too bloody. Forgive me in another life, brother." Something seemed to flicker in the darkness around them-

Why, he asked with his eyes, and received no answer. Why did he live, if just to be some cosmic joke to the whims of a too wide smile? "...please. Asura. Please. "

"Shukaku- Shuku-" his chakra flared, roots constricting- "I…" he sighed, dropping his hands to his side as the roots relaxed ever so slightly. "You're always right, you know? I mean, other than that one time you got yourself brainwashed for thirty years-" the gentle smile on his brother's face was brighter than the sun, and Shukaku couldn't help but grin in return. "This is like- like when you'd scold me for trying to jump across the stream when the bridge was like right there … forgive me. I don't know what came over me there."

A rough reached up to rest gently against the wood, and- a moment's eternity stretched wide as a shadowy, inky blackness reached out in parallel.

Wood crushed him as sand crushed Indra, and Shukaku couldn't spare a thought for just how ironic it all was before his world was pain - agony, and darkness.

………

Within a dream of eternities, existance's breadth against the depth of all things, a boy twice over drifted. Asleep on a bed of flowers, and stars- as ever the celestial bodies moved in perfect synchronicity, a syzygy of two who waited- a wizened hand laid on the essense of sand and wind in its not quite death. Stay strong, it said. Not your fault, it spoke in amaranthine order, whispering- I love you. And the monster's relaxed in its death, even as it was rebuilt, part by part in the natural order of things.

When Shukaku woke to the biting winds of a wind country sandstorm, he remembered all he'd lost, and could not weep.

His family was dead, and he had run out of tears.Chapter 6: Lonely Path

Summary:

Kokuo raised a hoof as if to sunder the plain beneath them, then paused, gently lowering it to the ground with an aggrieved sigh. "They don't just fear us anymore. They hate us."

Notes:

This chapter's a bit shorter- the next few will be the same, and then we should be back into the action.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Wind country was beautiful in a way he hadn't truly appreciated until he woke there. In his past incarnation he'd loved the forest- how its trees would tower above his head, the little streams and dew-soaked leaves, gentle breezes framing dappled sunlight.

As a bijuu, though, much of that experience was lost to him. Not that he didn't still like forests and gentle hills- he'd grown up in the forests of fire country with the Sage and his siblings, and he'd loved every acre of its dense wood, but the forest was… fragile to him. Nearly grown to his full size as he was, a single step of his would crush swathes of forest beneath him, rendering a few of his favorite activities outside of the bounds of possibility.

He missed his forests, but the vast openness of wind country, its sweeping deserts and jagged rocks that jutted from the swirling sands… The way the sun beamed down in harsh brilliance, glinting of polished outcroppings, monoliths of time… it was as beautiful as it was austere.

It was in the way he could feel the sand shift beneath him in its infinite permutations, geometric iterations interlocking and sliding past- the way he could feel the winds as they swept through the atmosphere around them, screeching through the rocks and playfully brushing off his back. He could see why the original Shukaku had liked the desert so much.

That, and there weren't many people who lived there. That was a definite bonus for a monster with the sort of notoriety he had. Even in the scant months since he'd woken up, the few groups he'd seen on the horizon had fled as fast as they could until they'd disappeared over the horizon.

Understandable, he mused softly as the night stole over him and he shifted into the sand's comforting embrace. Not a lot of people wanted to be around him after his mangekyou induced rampage. His siblings had been resolutely ignoring every request he'd made over the shared medscape… Asura, maybe, but the last time he'd seen him was with his wood release crushing him to death. Not a pleasant memory. Still, with his siblings mute he was probably the only one who'd talk to him. Hopefully he'd manage to fend the rest of Zetsu's advances off. Hopefully it was Zetsu in the first place. He couldn't quite shake the denial that it wasn't-

In the end, they all betrayed him.

Far too weary for a mere construct of chakra, Shukaku set off to fire country with the barest hints of hope yet flickering.

………

Asura was dead.

It was obvious in how the forest was cold and quiet like it hadn't been in ages- in how natural growth had begun to overtake the immense roots and impossibly massive trees that dotted the landscape. It was obvious in the absence of that impossibly bright, massive reservoir of chakra- in the void left in its passing, invisible until it was gone .

He had already felt it, and that alone was why he hadn't squashed the kunoichi he'd trapped like a particularly nasty bug at the revelation. "Who did it?"

"I- I don't know- nobody's really sure. Ichibi-sama! Please-" the sand coffin shifted softly- a warning- and she snapped her jaw shut to a sharp silence.

He shifted the sand again, and commanded in his rumbling voice- " speak . Choose your words carefully." He was just so done with this- terror, irrational fear… he'd stuck with humanity until the end, and here he was, most feared of the nine.

"...uhm. Our clan, the Nakamura- we're mostly protection shinobi for the villagers, so we don't know much." She wilted beneath the sudden sliver of killing intent he'd leaked out- another thing he'd have to train back under control. "We- we know some stuff though! Uh- the villages need protection because of the clans that are still fighting, and most of those are still vassals under the Senju and Uchiha- and the word is that the Uchiha killed the Senju patron god?"

Shukaku's mind got stuck on Senju patron god for a long second, torn between laughter and… well, laughter. Asura would have hated that. "Sand Burial." The shearing sound of stone on shifting earth, shuddered to a halt with the sickening crunch of bones and flesh, scarlet painting the clearing in luridly vivid red.

Sighing, he spared one last glance for the woods of fire country behind him… there was nothing left for him here. No family- none that hadn't betrayed him in the end, at least. If he hadn't been a human himself at one point in time, he might have been inclined to simply raze it all down , subsume it in the helpless wrath of the Juubi's chakra… but as there was nothing here for him, there was also nothing of worth to destroy.

Once, he might have stepped in to try and desperately stop them, make them just sit down and see peace…

There was nothing for him here.

Turning away, he began his loping run back to wind country, melancholy memories of a future not yet passed drifting through his mind as he envisioned so many generations of conflict, Senju and Uchiha against another until there was nothing left to remember but a shadow and an empty compound.

He couldn't bring himself to care.

………

His siblings… really didn't like him. Not unexpected, but disheartening nonetheless. Really, he should have expected it- if they didn't want to speak over their shared mindscape, then of course they wouldn't want to talk in person, either.

Still, if only to make sure they knew about Zetsu, he'd tried- and if he'd been getting lonely, then nobody had to know.

Matatabi had tried to light him on fire, and done a pretty good job about it.

Kurama had just tried to kill him. He barely managed to escape with his tail intact- blasting down the forest around him with a thousand hastily assembled sand seals to the sound of his own panicked laughter and the kitsune's roaring curses. Needless to say, that was one particular part of fire country he wouldn't be going to in a while.

Son Goku had tried, and succeeded, in beating him up.

Chomei just looked at him- silently - disappointment evident in every hard line on her carapace before she flew away.

Saiken spat acid at him, then brought a cave down on top of his head. That hurt, and left him sleeping for months to recuperate the chakra he'd used to escape.

Gyuuki sang at him. A particularly annoying, catchy song about how much he wasn't listening to him at all .

No matter how hard he searched, he couldn't find the slightest hint of Isobu's presence, and that left the last of them- the sibling he'd hoped to avoid.

Kokuo. The one who'd felt the most like family of them all… the one he'd betrayed by standing by the humans after the death of the sage. Sighing in soft resignation he pushed those thoughts to the back of his mind, pushing on with his careful gait toward the faint smudge of towering white over the rolling plains on the border between grass and earth country.

Steam's soft scent reached him before he reached where his brother stood so resolute. "Shukaku."

"...Kokuo."

The half-horse turned away, lowering his head as though he of all creatures needed to ruminate on the nature of grass. "I don't want to talk to you."

"It's important-"

"Go. Away ."

Shukaku was silent for a long moment, watching the wind ruffle the grass below them and the cloudless sky above. "...look, brother, it is important. I'm sorry-"

Kokuo snapped to face him, jaw clenched tightly for a moment as killing intent boiled the air around them. "Do. you. Know ? Do you know what you've done to us with your sheer, bullheaded idiocy? Even Kurama is more reasonable than you?"

"I-"

" Shut up! " In that moment, he was eerily reminiscent of the last time they'd talked, just before he'd blown… he pushed aside the memories, focusing on the far deeper undertones lacing his brother's voice, on the wind that brushed through his creamy fur, on his tails- anything but memories past. "We were living peacefully , and then you- you just had to go and get captured in Indra's genjutsu and thrown at anything and everything like a dull kunai." Kokuo raised a hoof as if to sunder the plain beneath them, then paused, gently lowering it to the ground with a sigh. "They don't just fear us anymore. They hate us."

"Oh." He understood, now- if just a little bit- his siblings reactions. "I… I was being controlled?"

Kokuo rolled his eyes. "We know . We could hear your screams all the time . Even what little we could see from the shared mindscape looked nasty ."

"There's the Kokuo I know. Wry little brother-"

Kokuo huffed in indignation. " You're the little brother! You're younger than I-" he froze, face slowly hardening back into disgust and sorrow- sorrow so fathomless. "I don't… really, really don't want to speak with you right now."

"Please-"

His muzzle twisted into a scowl. " Leave , Shukaku. Don't come back here again-" and, ignoring the bitter feeling seething in the bottom of his chest, he turned around and left Kokuo on the empty plains, alone with the endless winds and memories of anguish.

………

Shukaku curled up on a bed of sand as the hot sun traced shadows of his figure, monolithing darkness, transient in the cyclical arc of the celestial spheres. The heat created a sort of wavering mirage, a faint shimmer on austere sand that so subtly warped the perception of there and not- water where there was none, a point of fragile tension on a land of wind and rock.

So.

His siblings refused to listen to him, which- that was ostensibly sensible when it came to his advice on that particular pest known as humanity , given how thoroughly he'd been betrayed by them. Asking humans for help was… something he'd prefer not to do. The best he'd get would be coerced cooperation, and at worst Zetsu would know he was looking for him, and all his knowledge would become obsolete in the blink of an eye-

Future knowledge.

He blinked, running through the information in his head for a second- making sure to remember Zetsu, because he would never again underestimate that worm's subtle touch- trying to remember what had happened after Indra and Asura's… spat.

It had been father's fight with grandmother, his brothers' war, then… Hashirama's childhood- and the vague notion that so much time had passed that the two clans didn't even remember why they were fighting anymore.

Groaning in daunted frustration, Shukaku lashed his tail into the dunes, watching the colossal plume of shattered stone and falling sand drift through the air as the sound of his pained chuckles ground together so deep. He could do this… bijuu were supposed to be like… animate typhoons for the most part, natural disasters of immeasurable power who just… did more or less nothing? He wasn't entirely sure, but hundreds of years of that felt…

It sure was something. He turned on his side, a flex of chakra pulling the dunes up to cover him like a particularly comfy blanket- as much as he was loath to wait so long for the interesting stuff to happen, if he had to do so, he'd rather do it well rested.Chapter 7: Trickster's Legend

Summary:

Couldn't he have remained in that- something- before he'd been reincarnated into this immortal shell? Could he have not lived amongst the peaceful humans of earth, the father and sister and three friends who weren't monsters like the rest?

He wanted to sleep.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

As the stars above ever whirled in maddening patterns, shifting so slowly as the years crawled past- as the sun rose and set in predictable ways, chased ever by the hungering- moon, its eye plucked and buried in nine parts; he lived. The dunes endlessly chased themselves with the dance of the wind, rocky outcroppings rising and falling beneath a sea of golden sand.

As humanity recovered from so many years of tragedy- as the world was forged anew in the homeostatic balance, Shukaku set himself to work, tearing into the roots of the world in the desolate wastes of central wind where the sun was too hot to be hospitable and jagged rocks made passage on foot all but impossible.

First, an entrance. The same rocks that made it so difficult to reach would make tracing him far too easy if he crushed them underfoot, so they'd have to be thinned out. A labyrinth, instead of an impassable wall- easy enough to pass through, too dangerous without desperate motive, its true prize hidden where they simply wouldn't look. He called upon the strength of his wind and rent valleys through the stone, shattered rock mixing with the settling sand in jagged pieces.

For deterrence… he might yet barely understand the workings of fuuinjutsu, but scouring explosive tags onto those jagged shards buried beneath the sand was child's play. Figuring out a way to turn them from seals to landmines was… a lot more difficult, but eventually he came up with a simple solution- make the ignition sensitive enough to detect the chakra used in sand-walking.

He'd light his own tags as he passed, but it was nothing a twist of chakra couldn't reinscribe into the stone. Hopefully, anyone who'd entered would simply leave on the other side, directed away from the few true paths by the bewildering maze, but the seals should make the entire area thoroughly unappealing. Well, his biggest hope was that he didn't get lost in his own maze. That would be embarrassing.

Second, a domain. Something defensible, almost impossible to access for a human, but immense enough to comfortably house a bijuu. Surprising absolutely no one, least of all himself, building something on that sort of scale was anything but subtle- the best he managed was an immense aperture sliced into the earth. A crack in the bedrock to some vast warren of darkness, a world of sand and labyrinthine danger.

Lastly, most importantly- fuuinjutsu.

………

Seals stitched themselves together and apart again under Shukaku's watchful gaze, sand in twisted lines and innumerable characters as he pierced together a thousand iterations on a single seal. A faint impression of chakra, reincarnated innumerable times as he picked at a seal he'd long since committed to memory.

Hagoromo's storage seal was, as he'd earlier suspected, the simplified version of a complex sealing matrix, but what he hadn't truly appreciated was just how complex it was. The amount of esoteric rules and deft interconnections necessary to hold it together must have been incredible- made all the more frustrating because he didn't know any of them.

The sand beneath him shifted again to a different iteration, slowly pulling at one of the exterior almost-icons he'd- tentatively- associated with the chakra consumption of the seal. Dislodged even slightly from its position, the seal's chakra consumption increased exponentially; removed entirely and the seal could barely store a single grain of sand.

Frustrating.

………

Two months passed with little incident until- finally - some of his observations yielded fruit. The almost-icon had been a cyclical damping matrix. Why that was important, he didn't know, but it was another piece in the puzzle that was fuuinjutsu. Nevertheless, progress was progress, and the matrix would be useful- it smoothed chakra frequency, preventing spikes from burning out more delicate parts of a script.

It wasn't enough.

Ready… he needed to be ready. Zetsu could not be allowed to complete his plans.

A new seal shifted into formation out of the thin sand at the bottom of his den, damping matrix connected to the fire-symbol he'd used in the explosive tags, harsh lines standing out so brilliantly as his they glowed bluish orange in the cavernous, pernatural dim.

The first five hundred odd times he activated it, it exploded in a gout of orange-white flames.

After that, it gouted flames-

Twelve days later, a faint seal glowed cheery orange beneath a flickering flame bound- a candle in the dark, catching on his eyes and looming sand.

Progress. Not enough, but it was progress.

………

Pale blue light flickered fiercely across the empty desert sands, almost lightning-blue in its intensity as chakra swirled inwards in spiraling patterns, a thousand streamers fitting together in perfect synchronicity, almost … Two rotations met each other on the wrong axis, and the rotation canceled itself out in an explosive blast of blue-white blast.

Sighing, Shukaku put his mind away from the matter, returning to the seal scrawled out across the dune beneath him and its duplicate behind him. There was a particular interior character that had been bothering him- it seemed… extraneous to the actual storage seal itself, yet somehow still important. It didn't fit his current theories at all.

Chakra interference? Something about the overlapping lines forming a weave… but it was a chakra emitter , not the sort of conduit character that should have caused that effect. He'd prodded at the mechanism for months, with nothing to show for it- and he could feel the faint frustration he had against it all.

For a moment he considered returning to his personal project, but this was important . He could try again when he was finished.

The sun rose over a tanuki hard at work, and a desert landscape covered in a thousand iterations of shattered sealwork.

………

Eventually he deduced it played a role in making some sort of internal barrier which snapped shut like a net whenever the seal was damaged, safely removing its contents instead of shredding them into shredded spaghetti. A barrier, which, by his count, broke no less than six of the eight fundamental laws of sealing he'd devised.

He would insist until his dying breath that throwing a bijuudama into the desert was a perfectly valid response to this information.

Still, as he forlornly returned to his ever doubling sealing work, he wondered why his new understanding felt less like a victory and more like bitter mediocracy. As if he wasn't fast enough .

Zetsu- the idea of him, paragon of all the things he truly, truly hated, skulked ever at the edge of his mind, and he put all thoughts beside his work aside. It needed to be done. He needed a way to fight back.

He needed this- the world needed his dedication…

………

Two humans snuck into his sanctum, twenty years after he'd first carved it from the bones of wind country, the bedrock once cracked and cratered by Kaguya's rampage.

"Sand coffin." The rasp- "sand burial." Two humans died, crushed to death in an instant beneath the weight of his sand.

He returned to his work in a fowl mood, too disturbed- frustrated- to complete anything productive that night.

………

Translucent white shivered in the air as his chakra drained alarmingly fast, seal burning with a brilliant luminescence and such strength he could feel the faint will to block impressed on the natural energy around them. A small dusting of sand levitated smoothly from the floor, compacting into a hard sphere before flicking out gently against the barrier. Shukaku held his breath as it sailed through the air, gravity asserting its dominion.

The pebble clinked against the barrier and bounced off with a disappointingly mundane lack of explosions or shattered seals- just as Shukaku's chakra drained at an alarmingly fast rate. It was better than the last try, but not good enough. A barrier that drained a significant portion of a bijuu's chakra reserves for such a weak effect was something that clearly wasn't working correctly.

Letting the barrier flicker out of existence, he ground his sand together in frustration, remembering visions of scarlet fuuinjutsu which bound the Juubi with unbreakable force, Rinnegan and six paths senjutsu powered barriers the next best thing to unbreakable. In comparison to that- that pinnacle of sealing which still had failed to stop the near end of the world, this was… pitiful.

Pathetic. He needed to get better .

………

It was natural energy disruption. He must have been slipping if he had forgotten that the barrier matrix used in the seal would have only worked in absence of everything else. That also neatly explained why he hadn't been able to store anything yet living.

Dark eyes - weary- followed the progress of his most recent home invader- note, annoyance- as they desperately scurried through a maze of rose-tinted barriers, panes of energy anchored over a sprawling mess of seals traced in sand. A sharp shriek echoed through the underground chamber as one of the barriers snapped against the press of his foreign chakra- rendering that path of development obsolete- and the screech of metal on nothing as another held.

It was as good a way as any of determining their tolerance to normal levels of strength- and if they were stupid enough to delve into his den, and smart enough to make it there in the first place, they'd probably make good testing dummies.

A few hours of mindless testing later, the shinobi slumped to the ground, breath heaving in utter exhaustion. Stifling a sigh Shukaku scraped the last of his observations into the wall behind him before stepping out of the shadows. "Sand coffin." Gaara's attack was… perfect, really- simple, easy, and powerful .

The shinobi squeaked in terror as sand swept him up into a constricting embrace, chakra flaring with some form of killing intent so pitifully weak as to barely register on his senses at all. "I- Ichibi- the barriers, were those yours?"

"Yeah." He tried to make himself sound suitably intimidating and failed spectacularly, but if the shinobi's pasty white skin and violent trembling were any indicator, he probably hadn't needed to in the first place. "I have some questions." He grilled the terrified shinobi about his internal chakra's reaction to the barriers- constantly having to stop and explain terminology he didn't know just so he could get a slightest idea of how well they were holding up.

"...I don't know the rest. The… uh, tenketsu? Yeah- the tenketsu feel strained, and my coils feel warped- like something was trying to take my chakra and mix it, but blowing up…"

"That's enough." He'd gotten all the information he needed to fix some of the barrier's most glaring problems. For a single second he hesitated- it had been enjoyable to explain his work like that- but he had a purpose . There was no time for something that could go so disastrously wrong.

He stared at his prisoner, wrapped in sand, his pale eyes glancing to every shadow in exhausted fear-

Steel. Strength- he turned back to his notes in disinterest, massive hand crushing into a fist. " Sand burial. "

………

A faint rumble shifted the careful array of sand he'd laid out- a crude, but effective looping spiral of connected lights to track chakra loss in a seal over time. He'd laid it out over the entire cavern floor- and, given its size, just… let it sit there. Maintain complete control would have been too difficult, even now, but it was a simple matter still to correct the blurred lines and restart the experiment-

Another faint rumble, making his sand shifting in frustration. Annoying . Hopefully whatever was causing that would stop soon-

The roof exploded inwards in a blast of burning heat, blazing light and cacophonies reverberating as massive chunks of stone crashed down. A lot of things happened in a very short amount of time, bewilderingly quick yet not so fast to put them outside the realm of his perception.

A tall, muscular man leapt forward with a cry. A veritable crowd of shinobi threw random, insultingly weak attacks at him. A shinobi wrapped in black bandages, only their eyes uncovered, tossed a giant puppet made of sticky clay toward him.

Two kunoichi working in tandem tried to put him under a genjutsu .

That snapped him out of his incredulous shock and into furious anger in the instant its chakra touched his and shattered. He supposed it was probably a strong genjutsu for the time, but against the most powerful compulsion to have ever been used he swept it away like air and dust, and rage- he let himself feel wrath for a moment, and in that instant the cave was filled with killing intent.

The muscular man struck his shoulder and blasted out a crater of sand with a painful sting even as he manipulated the conveniently freed chakra-rich sand from his arm into explosive seals. Even as everyone was still finishing with their initial attacks, the muscular man exploded in an impressive display of gore and fire.

The two genjutsu kunoichi were next, sand flowing into the matrix for a few simple barrier seals beneath them- the sheer surprise on their faces as they were trapped in a cube of glowing light was priceless . "Wind release: great breakthrough!" A blast of air roared from his mouth with furious power, sending everything in its path tumbling until it slammed against the barrier, destabilizing it with… spectacularly destructive results.

The most powerful of the weaker fire attacks actually managed to reach him, furious flames splashing across his sand as the clay puppet sprinted forward to reach him- each thunderous step of its momentum only adding to the cacophony in the room.

A twitch of the puppet master's hand sent the puppet skyward in an impossibly acrobatic contortion, arms reaching- stretching, a third hand bursting out from the puppets back to halt its mad approach- just in time for it to land neatly before him, fist cocked back for a powerful blow.

Shukaku sneered inwardly as he retaliated with monumentally more force, ponderously swiping his tail toward the… annoyance. Burning golden eyes glanced up to the bandaged shinobi, watching his attention flicker to the dismembered kunoichi trio for a hint of a second before his entire body hardene in desolate determination. "Retreat!" Shukaku's tail landed on the puppet, easily smearing the construct across the floor- " katsu! "

Oh. Clay, the earlier rumbling, a unique activation phrase… the only logical answer was explosion release, he thought as the concussive force of the blast tossed him bodily into the air and through the top of his burrow, the light, noise, impact of the blast momentarily stunning him.

Beams of sunlight streamed through the shattered ceiling and choking dust, gleaming in a thousand iterations of the moment's dance as he crashed back to the floor, alert for any more threats in the concealing sands. Shadows flickered at the edge of his vision, yet a few seconds passed with no attacks.

They were running. They'd come here, to his domain where he bothered nobody , specifically prepared to subdue him with genjutsu, and then ran . He was a little mad-

Then he leapt out of the crater, saw the straight trail of destruction blasted through the maze he'd worked so hard on, and a little mad , was reevaluated to furious. The sand held in his control responded to his anger almost instinctively, tsunami-waves of sand crashing down on the fleeing shinobi- crushing force grinding the stragglers into the bedrock even as the forerunners found buried explosive seals blasting apart rock and flesh beneath them.

It was like a game- he was the cat and they were the mice- and no matter how far, no matter how fast, he could run further, faster .

Three shinobi faltered at a dead end, and Shukaku watched with apathetic disdain as they attempted to climb up the walls with chakra and experienced his explosive tags firsthand. A spike of sand each finished the job.

One tried to sacrifice themselves for their teammate, body engulfed in the furious chakra of the eight inner gates. It would have been really interesting if they'd managed to open the eight gate, but they only reached the fifth before internal stresses tore them apart in a wrenching dismemberment of their own movement.

Pathetic. He killed their companion and bounded back into the maze.

The explosion release nin turned out to be an engaging chase, aware of the tags buried beneath the sand enough that they never ran anywhere without lighting off a few explosives. It should have made them predictable, but the way they expertly wove false paths, paying no heed to any obstacle they could just go through - it made them hard to keep track of amidst the shrouding smoke and falling sand.

To a human, they would have certainly managed to escape in the labyrinth's rugged terrain. To Shukaku , who towered above the craggy spires and windswept stones, their overall path was ultimately clear. The moment he shunshined out of the labyrinthine rocks Shukaku slammed the entire area with a blast of wind, tossing the explosive release user into the- where they flipped off one of their own puppets and rocketed away.

For a single second Shukaku stared at the rapidly fleeing figure before loping into a run behind him. There was no way he was going to allow the person who blew up his entire maze to escape without at least dying. The crash of his steps on the desert cast entire dunes into the air behind him, each step like the tremors of an immense drum- pounding, moving, pushing forward to a rhythm of wrath and righteous anger.

They couldn't keep running forever. Eventually their rocket would run out- eventually they'd run out of clay entirely, and then his victory would be assured. He leapt across a sandstone plateau in a single leap, eyes trained on the nin as his rocket's flames finally began to sputter out.

He landed in a city.

A city . A smear on the horizon from this distance, but when he'd first built his den there hadn't been any cities here- the only oasis wouldn't have been able to support more than a tiny town that had built up around it. Still, it stood- defiant against everything he'd suspected, against the entire knowledge of two lives to support his presumptions.

Two and a half hours later, a gaggle of injured shinobi limped back from the desert, blood drying on tattered uniforms and dripping from hastily bound injuries and missing limbs. A second group dragged themselves in mere hours after that, and a third only thirty minutes later.

There was nothing to the west of this city until the port cities rose where the desert met the sea… except his domain. These were the shinobi who'd attacked his home- these wounded nin so ragged, these nin who'd invaded and blown up everything . This, the city where they lived- the city far too close . No wonder he kept being interrupted more and more frequently…

Yang and yin, two to eight.

Black ball swirling, rotating, crushing the sand beneath him with the density of its chakra and igniting the winds of nature- sand screaming as it lashed the air in cyclical winds whirling- powerful. He could see the nin in the village awaken at the sensation of his near-fathomless chakra, too far away to do anything.

The bijuudama stabilized at just over the size of his head, thrumming with destructive potential- why wade into a difficult battle, if a single hit from afar could eliminate the annoyance?

When it hit the center of the city, the resulting explosion put anything the explosion release nin could do to shame. A shock of light and heat, a snap of air that pushed against him back even miles away, almost too loud- a rush of wind and the thermal of the molten stone pulling the smoke and dust into the air in a billowing cloud.

The smoking ruin of the city looked like a nuclear war-zone as he stepped close, pushing through the crumbling stone wall with sand following his tail like an obedient dog.

The city screamed.

He closed his ears and began to bury everything beneath a shifting wave of sand, each ponderous step crushing adobe and homes burnt and burning. People fled from his advance, but it was futile- they were civilians who'd not even followed the basic ninshu-

"Stop!" He couldn't quite place it, but the high pitched, wavering voice brought him short. "Don't- don't come any closer." Sand settled behind him in quiescent agitation as he looked down into the face of a girl who couldn't be more than ten. "I won't let you hurt my parents."

His killing intent sharpened at the sheer gall of this annoyance. The sands began to spill forward again, inching inevitably toward the girl and her family behind her-

Yet, against it all- tears ran down her face as she screamed- "stop! Stop you monster -" the words hit him twice as hard as any of the attacks he'd suffered in his den- because despite it all she yet stood against him-

Like a man who'd stood still before a row of tanks, for a belief he'd die for.

Like the soldiers who'd marched to their deaths against Indra's elite for an Asura not corrupted by the sorrows of war or Zetsu or both, to build a better world no matter the cost.

Like two men who'd stood in front of their mother, a god beyond the comprehension of mere mortal minds, and saved the world for it.

Inwardly, he cursed Indra, cursed Zetsu for binding him even after he was free.

Mostly he cursed himself as he turned around and left in silence, unwilling to look back at the smoking ruin casting its putrid smoke onto a cloudless sky.

………

Why. Wasn't. It. Working! The math had been correct, and his experiments had suggested a connection between a particular section of connectors and the metastability he so desperately needed in his barrier seal, but it just- wouldn't work. Either the math was wrong, or his sealing theory was wrong again.

He smashed the side of the cave in frustration and brought down the ceiling with a beautiful constellation of exploding tags and as the rocks crashed against him couldn't help but wonder about a time when fuuinjutsu used to be fun … and now he had to rebuild the warren.

Annoying . Perhaps he could understand what Kurama was getting at when he spoke of how he hated him.

He thought, at that moment, that he hated himself too.

……….

One time while clearing the warren's floor for the next experiment, a thought drifted past the back of his mind. He could either remove Zetsu… or remove one of the pieces Zetsu so desperately needed to enact his plan. Seal himself away to dreamless sleep, escape this cursed existence and save the world… he dismissed the thought in an instant, returning his focus more thoroughly to the fuuinjutsu experiments at hand. As much as he had no time for personal projects, he also had no time for idle fantasies.

Yet, the years grew long.

As the moon wheeled in celestial rotation, always there in the back of his mind- as the sun cast its ceaseless rays against the desiccated corpses, the dry bones of what travelers called the demon's labyrinth, he pulled further and further from the domain of air and light- for what need had he of the sun when sealwork was better performed indoors. Discoveres build on each other as he inched slowly, so impossibly slowly toward a more complete theory-

He hated it. Fuuinjutsu was never anything less than frustrating anymore, an endless cycle of development- seals that eventually performed their function but could never be built into the truly powerful techniques he'd need to fight gods like Asura. He hated how his mind would wander, and how when he focused he could never get rid of the thought- of a girl, calling him monster.

Of a brother with nine tails and an angry snarl who spoke to him of idiocy and weakness . Never enough- not seals nor sand- he was a Sasuke to Zetsu's Naruto, Madara to Hashirama, outstripped. Inferior .

Of a swirling, dreaming of red eyes bleeding and pinwheels defying fate, remnants of remnants etched by himself , unbreakable because they were mere nightmares of his own creation. They whispered to him and he hated it- a fool, a fool.

Fuuinjutsu projects simply… stopped holding his attention for long. Scrounging up the motivation to push forward- because Zetsu was waiting , always working- was a chore. Doable, but a chore . His chakra felt leaden in the cavern's perpetual gloom.

Once he started, he hated . Just… everything. The circumstance of his life- couldn't he not have remained in that- something- before he'd been reincarnated into this immortal shell? Could he have not lived amongst the peaceful humans of earth, the father and sister and three friends who weren't monsters like the rest?

He wanted to sleep.

Ten years- perhaps, for time bled beneath the constant gloom of his sealed warren- later, he stood in the center of a vast spiral, stone compacted into the shape of a foot-tall teapot placed perfectly within its center. A perfect chakra storage seal- a circle in a spiral in a circle, energy set on a loop neverending.

For a moment as he drained chakra into the seal he dreamed of eight siblings who might, one day, find something redeemable in humanity-

It flashed blue, and with the draw of a hook as wide as inevitability, he fell asleep .

………

" Can't… rumors are spreading…"

" That's the point. They… find it. " The faint impression of white fur and hooves-

Red tail tips- " terrible! He… happens to… is deserved. Leave it lie- "

" Never ." Resolute. He dreamed of resolution and determination so impossibly vast. It was a good dream.

" Do… you will… learnt his lesson. Don't betray…"

"I… not betray… family."

A long pause, where only the darkness of death-not-death lulled him to a calm sleep. It was peaceful, he didn't think, not having to worry about the fate of all life all the time.

Oh. Color again- white flickers and sharp teeth, and tentacles. " So I do… inspired. Do you… will work? "

" It must."

Darkness.

Faint emotion, this time- sorrow, determination like diamond.

Anger. Fox's incandescent wrath against determination, losing again as it always had, time and time again- always would. If only his was still so resolute…

Asleep, he could feel no thing.

Mind adrift, he dreamed of impossible things, and family.

Chakra flickered- a faint sensation, so close yet also more distant than the stars. A touch of chakra against the bindings that held his chakra tight, against the sleep enforced- like flickering lights, three hundred and sixty one points of brilliance-

The lid of the teapot shifted slightly- the lines of the seal disconnected, a spiral broke and he was awake in an instant- so fast it was jarring. Sand and chakra erupted from within the container, precipitating from the air until the hazy silhouette of a tanuki towered the human who'd messed with his seal.

As he faded into corporeality, he spoke a single question- " why ?"

"Uh- Ichibi-sama?" The kunoichi who'd freed him was still staring up in shocked fear, but a shift of his sand- entirely unintentional- was enough to shock her into talking. "I... I didn't know! The rumor across the continent was that there was an incredible treasure to be found in the demon's labyrinth, locked away… I didn't realize it would be the Ichibi - no offense, your magnificence-"

"Enough." He paused, a long moment spent in stillness, then sighed, crumpling to the ground bonelessly. Apparently, he couldn't even do this right. "...thank you. Thank you very much."

For the first time in decades, he let someone live - watching as she scrambled out of his den, terrified

A weak smile flickered across his face.

It felt nice.

………

"Why did you do it?" The shared minscape spread out before him just at it always had- vast and empty and blank but for the visage of his sibling. "Well? Why'd you start the rumors-" he flinched into a defensive stance as Kokuo leaped towards him, but the expected blows never came.

Five tails wrapped around him in a crushing embrace as Kokuo sobbed into his sand. " Don't do that again you- you idiot . You fool! You- you worried me…" his voice cracked- and a selfish piece of himself wished the moment never had to end. "I- you- you can't do that. You- you could have been trapped forever- no sun and grass and fire and water and- you-"

"I think what Kokuo's trying to say is that we're sorry."

Kokuo sniffed softly, slipping out of the hug to stand by Gyuki and Chomei. "Kurama's not."

Shukaku chuckled softly at the thought, letting himself step back from the edge of tension he'd been standing once since he'd entered the shared mindscape. "Is this the part where I apologize back for causing everyone to hate you?"

Chomei bounced a bit happily, wings buzzing in… excitement, probably- "yep!" Gyuki glared at her and she positively wilted . It had been… so long since he'd last experienced the bug's energetic moods. "Uh… I meant, no? Yeah, no!"

Gyuki snorted softly and dragged Chomei away by the tails- probably to talk about appropriate behavior, or maybe to just escape the awkward air- but either way it left him alone in Kokuo as he shuffled his hooves nervously in the sudden silence. "I…Shukaku." He bit at his lip for a second then deflated with a sigh, half-groan. "I don't know how to put this. I was never… never good at this sort of thing… Shukaku. Shukaku, I love you . I will cherish you always- even when I told you to go away I was trying to… something! My thoughts were turbulent, then." His eyes met his, so earnestly - "I've been a bad brother but… Shukaku. Please, if you listen to nothing else, listen to this."

Shukaku knew what he'd say. He'd told it to their father in their infrequent talks by the fire, and his father had told it to them as he lay amidst the last time they'd all been together-

This time, Shukaku was the one who stepped into the hug as his brother whispered, all of emotion at the tip of his tongue- "Shukaku. I will always love you."

He'd died, but as the bijuu were wont to do he'd lived - and this time he'd found his family.

………

A new legend, of the beast who'd tricked the explorer into freeing a monster slowly trickled into the common parlance of fireside tales and horror stories, whispered to children in the dark of night-

A cautionary tale. Don't listen to monsters.

To one tanuki, the trickster's legend was a reminder- a promise- that there would always be someone out there willing to love even him.

………

The vastness of the desert spread lonely around him, perfect dunes casting long shadows counterpoint in the moonlight- the wind whistling against the darkness, overhead, its breath the glittering of a millions stars spilled across the sky.

Shukaku breathed , standing so solemnly alone, yet more relaxed than he'd been in years as his glimmering light destabilized and failed. Still… there was just something about it that felt… light. There was no… pressure, no self-inflicted demand to always be better, find out more and more- just… he just had to do , and it was enough.

Chakra shifted above an outstretched palm, flickering blue bleeding out into swirling weaves, spinning and spinning and just so energetically pulling all his attention to a simple task, letting him forget about the stress he'd been putting on himself. About past mistakes and future possibilities- and in the moment, he lived, remembered, and laughed- at himself, at old happy memories.

If there was anything having a twenty-first century psychological base in a heinously unsympathetic world did for him, it was letting him laugh at the truly terrible mental health decisions he'd made.

As the blue swirled together, moving faster and faster until it hummed with barely restrained energy, the last components slowly fitting into place, he let himself just… enjoy the moment of something done entirely for fun .

The last piece snapped into place, and the instability became so incredibly stable-

" Rasengan, " he intoned, and in the sovereignty of a wind country night, a sphere of brilliant blue sat perfectly cusped in the palm of Ootsutsuki Shukaku's hand.Chapter 8: Rest for the Weary

Summary:

Sometimes, he'd just sit there and watch the spinning blue light, its electric blue luminescence casting sharp shadows in monstrously grotesque forms across the dunes. Two things, in contrast- a person, and the memory of darkness-

As the years bled, time endlessly moving, stars drifting in pinprick constellations, he began to feel free.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Learning to relax was probably the hardest thing Shukaku had ever done. It was just so dramatically against everything he'd done before that the ways he'd pushed himself into doing things were worse than useless. Thinking about Zetsu only ever made him want to drop everything and focus on that with single minded intensity, and refusing to think about Zetsu made him feel so much more inferior than he already was.

It was a delicate balance- not too little that he felt he wasn't doing anything, but not too much that it would become a chore. He hadn't touched fuuinjutsu development more than a few minor projects since he'd been freed, and still he felt the need to drop everything and figure it out - and everything else felt like a poor substitute for the vaunted practice. Nevertheless, he kept trying- he had centuries before anything had to be put into practice.

The fact that his family was there - that they still loved him… it was enough to make him keep trying . He'd not let them down again.

………

Years passed like water, sand shifting in endless eddies out across the desert- under the weight of time, his labyrinth only deadlier by the decade. Eventually that delicate of progress and leisure became less burningly frustrating and more second nature- a hundred little things-

Slowly shaping the sand together, pulling together the rock and repairing the gaping wounds blasted through his labyrinth by a myriad of nin who thought themselves so clever .

Making a fuuinjustu barrier to trigger a few particularly large explosions if the crags he'd just spent so working got randomly obliterated. Shinobi , he couldn't help but chuckle inwardly- danger sign was like an invitation for those fools, one with flashing lights and a stealable things inside note tacked on the side.

At least they'd… mostly… stopped trying to kill him- he never even ran into random shinobi in his warren anymore, and most of the times he found one above ground they just… ran away.

That was another thing he was working on- finally freeing himself from the instinctual response to just kill everyone he came across. It wasn't even something Kokuo nagged him about, like taking time off from fuuinjutsu or to try some more artistic endeavors- as if seals weren't an art form , the ignorant bijuu- the horse probably wouldn't have cared if he went and killed a few more cities. It was just… like letting go, a breath held too long- a hatred he didn't need to keep internalizing again and again.

He let the ones who chose to leave, live- a command in silent condemnation, and in doing so released himself from the bonds of- red, spinning , ever watching, quiet memories he'd like to forget.

Sometimes, during the nights his fuuinjutsu projects started to wear on him, he'd bound away to the deep desert so lone and level, spinning rasengan after rasengan as he kept careful watch over the horizon for nothing, and everything. He'd think of the future and, sometimes, it didn't even weigh down on him like an unliftable weight. He let go- of its crushing approach- the nervous anticipation of possibility, of so many things only half-remembered, and the endless dread of marching time.

Sometimes he'd try, and fail, to imbue his wind affinity into the rasengan. Sometimes, he'd just sit there and watch the spinning blue light, its electric blue luminescence casting sharp shadows in monstrously grotesque forms across the dunes. Two things, in contrast- a person, and the memory of darkness-

As the years bled, time endless moving, stars drifting in pinprick constellations, he began to feel free .

………

It was rare, but he sometimes ran into civilians in the meandering expanse of his domain. Unlike the nin who cut into the edges of his labyrinth they were truly helpless- the sheer cliff walls too difficult to climb without the help of chakra, the sands thick and deep for pack animals and wagons.

Shukaku couldn't help but find it fascinating, how even then a few would bravely push forward into the rocky maze. He supposed it made sense from a purely logical point of view- his domain was in the center of wind country, and if you didn't get lost in its maddening turns then it could make a journey of months into a jaunt of mere weeks. The explosive tags calibrated to chakra use wouldn't trigger for them, so most of their danger was in getting lost and dying of thirst.

Most of the time, he just watched them struggle forward- their actions so very human - triumph of death, more bones to litter the sands of the labyrinth, freedom or freedom in death. Sometimes he'd walk beside them and laugh at how terrified they were of his silent presence- or, in a few notable cases, convinced themselves he was nothing but a particular persistent fabrication of the mind.

Rarely, so very rarely, he'd listen to their stories and wonder at the uniqueness of it all- their plight, their desperation or arrogance that led them to delve into a place even shinobi feared. How marvelous the world spread out beyond mere sand and wind was, cities and societies , trade and destructive conflict weaving together into just a part of the tapestry that was- time, humanity's enemy and its greatest tool.

From those travelers it learned so many fascinating things. The ocean trade with the other continent collapsed for a few years, once, leaving thousands impoverished. Earth and wind country got in a border dispute over fang country, which was apparently a wind country vassal. Petty conflicts and news of an empire from iron country of all places conquering the entire continent.

One had gone into a very colorful tirade about how foolish the emperor was to expect the Senju and Uchiha to 'stop getting off to stabbing each other,' before spinning a story of secret assassination wars. It had taken all his not inconsiderable willpower to stop himself from laughing at the thought.

To the few he talked to, he made sure they left the maze with their lives. It was the least they could do.

It was the most he could do.

Three hundred years passed in fairly idyllic peace, and- towards the end- Shukaku thought he might have even figured out what Kokuo meant by rest .

………

The winds of change came with the scent of acrid smoke from the east and faint rage in the back of his mind. He'd felt it as he finagled with the fine details of the different kinds of sand- and earth- he could control, trying and failing to use earth release to make sandstone instead of its usual indeterminate composition.

A faint series tremble- barely enough to disturb his jury-rigged seismometer seal- but unique enough to pique his interest enough to make him drop the poor failure of a sculpture and bound to the surface.

The sun wavered in a faint haze. The air tasted like smoke.

Rage burned behind the back of his mind.

He sighed and leapt back into his warren. Hopefully he wouldn't have to deal with… whatever this was. It sounded distinctly unrestful, and Kokuo would politely hound him forever . No, ignoring the irony of fire country being on fire was probably for the best.

………

Two days later, smoke and ash from iron country drifted across the desert skies, and Shukaku began to have a disturbingly strong suspicion as to what had happened.

When not even a year later his labyrinth turned into a warzone as part of wind country's bid for the empire's empty throne, he knew he was correct.

………

"...this is the sand demon? He's really scary!"

"... quiet! " The two voices were but whispers, but against the regular silence of his warren they stood out like particularly loud explosives. He cracked open an eye as two figures paused at the far end of his sanctum- not quite right by the edge, the smaller figure slipping off the larger's back. "...stay right here. Don't come closer."

" Okay! " The voice was startlingly small for a shinobi, but he didn't dare dismiss the nin as they stayed put, hidden in the shadows of a rocky wall. From his experience with shinobi trying to kill him, it was always the ones who stayed in the back that would cast the most randomly powerful jutsu.

The larger of the two darted forward, katana clutched smoothly in her hand, steps lithe and smooth. To her credit he probably wouldn't have noticed her had she not spoken with the way she neatly avoided the tripwire barriers and hidden explosive tags littered across the floor with perfect precision until she stood right in front of him, her breathing slow and even as to maintain her stealth.

For a long moment she just… stood there, quietly waiting- opening her mouth as if to speak, then pausing and glancing back to the second nin in the shadows.

Honestly, the indecision was starting to get on his nerves. "Sand coffin." The kunoichi squeaked in startled shock and flipped away, but he'd been using his sand for hundreds of years and he was faster . Not more than three seconds, and she was already bound… pathetic, really, but there was a reason nobody but the suicidally brave- and foolish- tried to attack him anymore. "What are you doing here?"

"I- Ichibi-sama! This one begs your patience for trespassing. Please-" her voice cracked slightly as she tried frantically to look at the shinobi in the shadows, only for the sand to restrain her. "...bad idea… please, at least spare my daughter this fate."

"Why?"

A flicker of a smile flashed across the woman's face. "She's a civilian. As it is, I've not ever heard a story of you killing civilians."

He frowned. Bringing her daughter to a battle with the Ichibi seemed like the height of stupidity to him."I kill everyone who enters my warren."

"Everyone who enters your warren has so far been a shinobi."

Shukaku scowled- this human was being frustrating . "You know nothing- nothing at all. You've given yourself to your mercy assuming I have any, and now you'll both die in the heart of my domain."

For a long moment there was silence between them, sandy blue eyes staring into burning gold, a hint of Shukaku's killing intent flaring into existence. "...liar." There was a calm certainty to the word that infuriated him- "you'll rend me limb from limb and happily bury my bones beneath the sand, but you won't kill Okimi."

Shukaku tightened his sand reflexively as frustration roiled beneath his skin, eliciting a hiss of pain from the kunoichi. "You can't possibly know that for certain."

"A story my mother…" she wheezed in a breath against the tight sound, face pale with pain and fear- "our ancestor… the one thing she never told anyone but her daughter as she diligently laid the groundwork for our kekkei genkai. She told me… the demon she freed thanked her-"

"Leave mom alone! " The shinobi who'd been hiding in the darkness- the child, a girl who couldn't have been more than six- ran up to him and delivered a remarkably ineffectual kick to his leg that stunned him for longer than some of the most powerful attacks he'd ever seen. What was it with little girls and their ability to just- run up and deal crippling emotional damage?

Something shifted in his sand- foreign chakra brushing against his own in his instant of indecision and shoving it out of the way with all the force of a hammer to the head. The sand of his sand coffin shifted, just for a second, but it was enough for the kunoichi to shunshin in front of her daughter. Her sword screeched with flickering wind chakra, an admittedly impressive killing intent pouring out of her.

He looked at the girl, then back to the bristling kunoichi. "What are you running from, that death by terrifying sand monster would be preferable?"

The kunoichi narrowed her eyes, killing intent sharpening into a blade-edge prickling. "Sabaku clan tyrants . They have a monopoly on anything to do with sand manipulation, and take… great … offense to anything that might oppose that. In our case, they find our sand release… interesting ." Her eyes were piercing, and he couldn't help but remember what Matatabi would be like, fiery in her readiness to strike out. "I won't allow you to touch my daughter, but I won't allow them to control us either. I was running out of options."

The universe really wanted to play a cruel joke on him today, didn't it? Just to be contrary he snaked out a tendril of sand, forming them into a pair of tanuki ears atop Okimi's head. Trauma trigger number one- or, the mother as it was- puffed up in fury as his deep laughter rumbled through the chamber. "You wanted me to kill you, kill the invading nin, then… let your daughter die in the desert? Six year old humans are remarkably unable to do that." He could get not wanting to be controlled, though.

"I said I was running out of-"

"I'm eight you- you meanie!" Shukaku made the sand ears lay flat on her head, making her look almost scarily similar to a kicked puppy. His laughter only intensified as the kunoichi tried and failed to wrest control of the sand ears from him- paying rapt attention as he was, near nothing would be able to usurp control of his sand.

"You also seem to have some very cute little ears."

Okimi perked up in an instant, anger forgotten. "Really?" She felt at the ears above her head for a moment in wonder, then blinked, and scowled in sudden anger. "I don't need to be cute - I'm going to be the strongest kunoichi ever, then blow up all the bad metal sand men ever!" She tugged at her ears, only to be thwarted as her hands slipped unimpeded through the sand.

The kunoichi blinked as she watched her daughter pull ineffectually at the ears in her hair."You're not bad with kids, for being… well, the Ichibi . I was expecting a lot more bloodlust. And general murderous desire."

"It's been a long time-" it had, oh how it had, those halcyon days with his unembittered siblings so many ages ago- "but I still remember a bit-" and then a quad of nin surrounded by swirling metallic dust had to jump in and absolutely ruin the moment.

Well Shukaku found it was a bit funny to see their reactions as their quarry spoke cordially with the Ichibi, daughter playing games with his sand. In the moments before they were simultaneously crushed under a tsunami of sand, and exploded for good measure. Grisly, but effective, and he supposed he'd appreciate the extra metal…

"Whoh." Okimi had stopped playing with the tanuki ears to stare in starry eyed wonder at the morass of crushing sand settling at his burrow's entrance. "You… killed all the bad sand men so fast! You're the best!" She turned those earnest, wide eyes to him, mad grin clinging to her face. "I'm going to be just like you when I grow up!"

Shukaku looked to the kunoichi helplessly as Okimi ran up to him and poked at the sand of his leg with curiously innocent wonder.

It was her turn to just smirk, and laugh.

………

Just to the edge of his labyrinth, he told them. It was dangerous - purposefully so- in the winding corridors of sand and stone, and he'd feel terrible if little Okimi got her leg blown off by one of the exploding seals he'd placed.

At the edge of the vast emptiness of the desert, as Okimi hounded him for 'awesome sand stuff' in her adorably persistent way, he told himself- just a little further. Just until they reached their destination, then he'd leave.

Just until they were safe.

………

They were going… somewhere. Two weeks of essentially random movement later, the kunoichi was forced to admit she really hadn't had any ideas beyond killing the four Sabaku nin who'd been following her, which left Shukaku as the one plotting their course.

The same Shukaku who hadn't traveled more than a hundred miles from his domain in like… five centuries.

Mindscape it was.

He dropped into the shared mindscape as they rested in the shade of a rocky plateau north and east of his labyrinth, its towering spires enough to shroud even his form from a casual glance, letting the blank landscape of the mind overwrite reality. He was alone, for the moment, so the impetus was on him to convey the message, and he did- sending a faint impression of his task and request to the other bijuu.

Kurama was the first to drop into the shared mindscape, fury crackling around him like putrid fire as he jumped at him. " Pathetic. You, you- helping a human after everything they've done to you? To us ?" He looked murderous .

Ah. He'd made a mistake in projecting the thought to all the bijuu. Then Kurama plowed into him like a meteor of pure intent to kill , and such petty things as regret and not being in pain immediately ceased to be very relevant at all.

Shukaku barely dodged the bite at his head but the sheer bulk of the kitsune at speed wasn't something he could just leap aside from, and he got to experience the delightful feeling of getting dragged across shattering stone with an angry Kurama standing on top of him. His tail lashed out in an instinctive seep, only to be blocked by three of Kurama's, six more lashing out to bind him in place.

Forget vastly more power, more tails was just unfair .

Still, there were a few things he was good at, sand twisting into a flurry of explosive seals with just enough force for him to get the few free seconds he needed to charge a bijuudama. The look on Kurama's face just before he got blasted into the air was very satisfying, as was the pure fury he shot his way when he landed only to get bound in his most robust sealing barrier.

Shukaku stepped up beside him, lines of sand spilling out to reinforce the barrier with a few others which wouldn't interfere with its function. "Had enough of your tantrum, Kurama?"

"An army. They sent an army after me, Shukaku. I've done nothing to them and they want to kill me- they killed all the kitsune ." Kurama's killing intent felt like staring into the sun from three and a half feet away. "That was their goal. They knew most of their samurai wouldn't even land a hit on me- so they went for the innocent foxes instead."

"You've already killed the ones responsible, and a million others besides."

" You wouldn't understand-"

Shukaku snarled . Kurama really knew how to push his buttons. "It wasn't my fault! The others more or less understand- I wasn't the one that caused them to hate us. Humans aren't uniformly evil, Kurama-" well, only Kokuo and Chomei could get behind that-

"Be. Silent! " Chakra swirled around the fox in a furious shroud, pressing down against the mindscape with the sheer weight of its density- a power surpassing his own ninefold, again and again pressed into a single black ball swirling, growing. At twice the size of himself it hung there for a moment as Kurama's judging eyes glared daggers. "You disgust me. One day, they'll take everything from you and you'll understand they should not be suffered to live-" and the bijuudama fired, shattering hsi barriers like glass and paper and sending him tumbling for miles.

The whole mindscape shook beneath the blast, cracks spreading through the stone in the perfect radial synchronicity only achievable in dreams. Shukaku groaned, struggling to his feet- only for a powerful blow from Kurama's tails to slam him back into the ground. Seals writ in sand swept out in a spiraling web, only to be immolated in the breadth of foxfire.

Again, a paw slammed his back down to the floor, and the only thought Shukaku parsed as he looked up was that his brother's tears truly traced a somber sight in the firelight of his unending wrath.

" Shukaku! " A bijuudama flashed by over his head, tossing Kurama away from him as a flaming blue blur jumped after it, followed in the next second lashing tentacles and pounding hooves skidding to a stop beside him. "Are you okay? I mean- uh- we're here, now. We felt the bijuudama. You should have just left the mindscape , you stupid- um, silly."

A faint smile cracked into existence as he stared into the Kokuo's concerned face. "I'm glad… you're the one that came. Chomei would demand to come with me…" two bijuu would probably be an excessive guard for Okimi and her mother.

"Thanks?" He glanced over to where Kurama was trying and failing to pin town Gyuki, and getting batted at by Matatabi for even daring to try. "I… I'm glad you're here too." Skukaku ground his sand for a second in frustration- this awkward dance of guiltily greeting him had been perversely satisfying for the first few decades- just a bit of satisfaction at watching him squirm for everything his siblings had done to him. It had been three hundred years , though, and still Kokuo was clearly convinced that if left to his own devices he'd invent a seal to throw himself into the sun or something.

He was willing to just… let it go. Kokuo didn't seem to have that in his dictionary of emotional maldevelopment, though.

"Yes, yeah, it's nice to see you again." The mindscape rumbled one last time beneath the force of double bijuudama, and then settled with Kurama wrapped up in Gyuki's tentacles. "So- here's the issue I was going to tell you guys about before Kurama so rudely interrupted me. I've got two humans- former imperials with a kekkei genkai- being chased by a belligerent clan, and I need somewhere completely safe for them."

"You can't just keep them, right?"

Shukaku slumped in exasperation. "No, and Chomei can't either. I don't think they'd have much fun trapped in a cave for the rest of their lives. I was thinking lightning country, but besides being way out of the way for wind nin, there's nothing there that'll actually keep them safe. "

Gyuki's deep voice interjected before Kokuo could complete his musings. "Uzushiokagure."

"Yep!" Matatabi slipped in beside them, smoke trailing off phantom wounds yet still perky from her victory over Kurama. "They're like- incredible. Nobody attacks them and lives- if you can get them in, then they'll be safe from anything . They're super good at sealing."

" I'm good at sealing."

"Oh. Right… then it'd be doubly good-" she shared a glance with Gyuki, then nodded, face grim. "Sorry. I don't think we should wait long- Gyuki and I are going to go and stop Kurama from taking out his anger on humanity."

Gyuki nodded solemnly. "Even if I don't agree with your arguments as to their worth, father wouldn't have wanted for this to be their end." They bowed, forms fading out of the mindscape to leave only Kokuo behind.

"Hey… be safe. Keep the lucky humans safe too- they'll love being around someone as awesome as you are." That was Kokuo at his finest- no matter how awkward it got, there was never the impression of disingenuity.

Shukaku smiled, brushing his tail over Kokuo's back. "Love you, little brother-"

"Hey! I'm older- " but he was already fading to wakefulness.

The sun had risen scarlet bright as he'd slept, and in waking the small fire they'd been sitting around had burned down to embers and ashes. Tired bags hung beneath the kunoichi's watchful eyes, ever so often flickering to where Okimi laid nestled up against his sand. She glanced up, imploring- "where?"

"Whirlpool." The home of the Uzumaki.

Destination set, they trudged onwards beneath the radiance of rising light of dawn.Chapter 9: Whirlpool Eye

Summary:

"No. No. I don't allow it!" He pulled at the depths of memories from a time before, pulled at the depths of his chakra as he gently lifted her off the ground, sand scouring the earth for all that'd been lost. "You will not die!"

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Fire flickered before him, a spark of gentle light in the otherwise desolate desert, shadows stretching infinite into the vast inky depths of the night. Stars glittered above them in perfect constellations- celestial lights illuminating, wind-worn spires silhouetted against the glittering sky.

The kunoichi poked at the fire, carefully feeding it the thorny brambles they'd torn out of the desert crags- silent and solemn, her expression missing some of the vibrancy it carried during the day. Then she glanced to where Okimi lay nestled in the crook of his elbow, and that faint smile of hers returned- a quirk of the lips, a gentle confidence and just joy .

A tendril of sand levitated from the ground, wringing itself in awkward circles for half a moment before it smothered the fire with nary a sound. Neat, precise- her sand release was remarkably good for someone who hadn't been using it for several hundred years.

He shifted a little closer in interest, careful not to dislodge Okimi. "Why do you use a sword?"

The kunoichi blinked, evidently confused at the inquiry. "It's a sword? I use it to stab people- why do you care, anyways?"

"I'm just interested. Your sand release is a far more powerful weapon than a mere sword; its versatility is endlessly more than a blade of steel."

"Sand release is nice , but tsunamis of sand and damned perfect defenses are more of a Sabaku clan thing." She hesitated, for a moment picking at the sand still swirling over the firepit with her chakra a little nervously. "I- I was a samurai-" the words poured out in a rush, and a faint tinge of pink dusting her ears beneath her dun hair. "Before the Kyuubi destroyed the empire, the Sabaku clan couldn't do anything to me so long as I served the state."

"Ah- and after Kurama's rampage, the empire's collapse meant you no longer had the protection you needed against the Sabaku." It made sense, especially if Sabaku had already been a clan of such importance as to drive their enemies and prey to such lengths for safety.

The deep furrow on the kunoichi's brow spoke to the length of her befuddlement. Perhaps she hadn't expected him to understand so easily? It wouldn't be the first time a human had tried something so stupid as assuming him unintelligent- "Kurama? Who's that?"

"The Kyuubi. My older brother."

"You're- you're name's not Ichibi?" The embarrassed blush on her face was furious now. "I- I've been calling you that in my head for the past two weeks we've been together!"

Shukaku rolled his head in exasperated disinterest, careful not to do something stupid like flick his tail at her. She wasn't one of his siblings- their playful conversations would be… extremely deadly to her. "You're good at extrapolation- Ichibi is not, in fact, my name."

"I'm not stupid- if nine tails isn't the nine tailed fox's name, then it only stands to reason that Ichibi isn't yours." The annoyed look she sent him was drier than the deserts, and more frustration-filled than dreaming overly-complicated old barrier seals. "Please- did you really think I was that slow?"

He choked back a gust of laughter, contenting himself with a soft shake of the head. "No… well, maybe a little bit- your original plan for Okimi was… startlingly bad. Almost disturbingly so."

"You couldn't do better!"

"I most definitely could. Either way-" he ignored the dignified pout sent his way- "you'd be surprised at the blind spot humans can have when it comes to the bijuu. I've had shinobi try to kill me by leaving out poisoned cattle."

She squawked, clearly offended on his behalf- "but you don't even eat! "

" Exactly . Humans can be stupid." He chuckled, softly, low- and the kunoichi giggled beside him- just a long moment spent in solidarity at sometimes-nature of humanity. Okimi shifted cutely in her sleep at the deep nose, nestling further into the sand of his arm now the fire's warmth had faded.

The kunoichi calmed- eventually, reclined into a sandy bed of her making, composed eyes staring thoughtfully at up at his own. "What is it, then?" He didn't answer for a long moment- "your name. You're not Ichibi, and I'm do feel somewhat bad for just… assuming. I should know better…"

"Don't stress over it. Our names are both treasure and a question away." The good-humored playfulness drained away, replaced by memories- echoes of a time so far ago yet exerting their sovereignty over him. She wasn't anything like Asura, but she certainly wasn't like Indra, either- calm and collected, expressive yet professional… perhaps that was his own issue, tying everything back into the curse of that time. "Either way, I've been calling you kunoichi in my head for just as long."

"Then it'll be an exchange." A faint grin spread across her face, but he could see the deadly seriousness in her eyes- the depths of conviction in her words. The type that swore that even if nothing else had been important, this - this moment was . "I'm Tora. Please take care of me."

He stared out to the vast and empty landscape surrounding them, the remnant of time, and memory- perhaps it had been long enough- and when he spoke it was but the whisper of crushing sand. " Shukaku ."

………

Sometimes it was hard for him to realize just how ridiculously he outclassed most everything on the planet. He'd spent so long focusing on getting strong enough to face unfairly powerful threats like Indra that when it came time for him to face normal shinobi he often spent longer looking at the pretty sand smears than actually fighting .

Needless to say, the Sabaku hunter nin learnt firsthand that night why fighting a bijuu was typically reserved for the insane and Ootsutsuki descendants- though the two weren't that mutually exclusive. More the opposite really. It really put Minato's sheer capability into perspective, though.

There was no fire that night- not with the hunting squads close on their trail. Okimi complained bitterly but quieted down quickly enough when her mother promised to teach her a 'cool jutsu' to keep her mind off the desert night's cold

Henge, as it was. Tora grasped her daughter's hands in her own, carefully bending her fingers into the correct hand seals as she explained the technique. " Imagine what you want- you're a clever girl, so it shouldn't be too hard to get a good image of what you want- then mold the chakra, perform the hand seals like I showed you, and will yourself to change. Like putty, eh? Try something small- leave the complete transformation for later."

"Okay!" She scrunched her face in concentration, chakra beneath her skin waking lethargically beneath her concentration, pushed forward by what he could only assume was remarkably effective control for an eight year old girl. It brimmed on the tip of her fingers, invisible yet furiously present - the energy of her life, vibrant still despite everything she'd gone through. "Uh- dog, boar, ram - henge!" The chakra twisted on itself in Indra's familiar patterns, and a puff of smoke blasted into existence for a few long seconds.

When it faded, it revealed Okimi's proud grin, and two tanuki ears nestled neatly atop her head.

Tora clapped excitedly, sweeping her up into a hug and gently ruffling her hair- just enough not to break the henge, but still far too much for her not to squirm halfheartedly in an attempt to escape. "Good choice! Keep in mind that it doesn't take much for the technique to fail."

"Not my technique! I'm the most powerful ninja ever , now-" a fact which was immediately disproved as Tora pulled at the ears lightly, dispelling them in a puff of smoke.

"Don't let it get to your head. Now you just need to practice until it's second nature." Okimi nodded in adorable resolve, scampering over to Shukaku's arm in an attempt to steal his precious warmth. He didn't even have fire release- how she found any appreciable warmth in his sand was beyond him. Maybe she just liked the seething calm of his Juubi-adjacent chakra? "And… she's gone." An incredibly fond look hung from her face like the stars from the sky. "Precocious brat."

"She understood the technique quickly. I think. When I was eight I could barely move a glob of sand around."

Tora raised an eyebrow in incredulity. "Somehow, looking at just how deftly you manipulate chakra, I find that hard to believe."

"You understand the relation between chakra reserves and control, yeah?" She nodded, and he just smirked in return. "Imagine being born with the reserves of a bijuu."

She winced softly at the thought, yet a bit of incredulous befuddlement still clung to her. "You're made out of chakra, though?"

Shukaku growled in mock anger- "and my lack of control despite that particular condition was the basis of many embittered complaints made by kid-Shukaku. My younger brothers-" he snapped his mouth shut.

"Younger brothers?"

Shukaku glared at her for a second before just… glaring skyward. Trust those two to ruin his mood even five hundred years after they died. "I don't want to talk about them." Now, or preferably, ever .

Tora nodded in sympathetic understanding. "Would you like to learn henge to take your mind off things?"

"You used that strategy on your eight year old daughter."

A raised eyebrow and crossed arms was the response to that particular statement. "Well? Do you want to learn?"

"...yes."

She smirked. "Thought so."

………

Wind country faded to the land of rivers, then to fire- verdant greenery clambering over every surface, grasses sweeping up beside the roads. Trees grew like twisted monuments over ruins and roads, dappled shadow reaching out with its clawed hands as they ponderously trekked onwards. The air itself felt moist , laden with humidity he hadn't felt for centuries- like standing on the edge of a storm- like the Ootsutsuki's forest, before it had been razed to the ground.

Three days after they entered fire country the skies cracked open to thunder's spearing strike, cascades of water- endless shadows of shifting precipitation- crashing down over them in sheets. It soaked into his sand and rendered the earth beneath him leaden to his manipulations, but there was still something so marvelous wonderful in standing within nature's heart. The center of the storm, thunderous winds and sharp thunder- seeing a world anew, five centuries later.

Perhaps he should have wandered sooner, if this was how it was. The air tasted of petrichor for the next day, and the Sabaku shinobi were even weaker than they had been before- for all they tried to ambush them, they were remarkably bad at it. Really, a large concentration of chakra-rich sand was like a particularly bright beacon to him.

On the fifth day in fire country Shukaku stopped beside the rotten remnants of a mountainous root, long since collapsed to the forest floor. A thick layer of trees clung tenaciously to the top of its bark, gnarled roots delving into the deep layer of organic soil that spilled out over the edges of the once-majestic root.

He wondered what the others thought of these things, now so long passed to ancient memory- the work of gods, or some dead god? Forest spirits? All he could think of was the jutsu that'd made them, and how powerful it had reigned over the enemy. Wood release: binding of the Shinju. How painful it had been in the moment of his death.

He was quiet for the rest of the day, gaze focused far into the distance of memories. If Tora noticed- and surely she did, because she was observant like that- then she didn't comment on it.

Shukaku appreciated that.

………

When the first competent attack came, had it not been for the Tora's sensory ability they would have been caught completely by surprise. As it was, Tora's seal-etched kunai flickered into the bush they were hiding in just moments before a barrage of shuriken sailed through the air towards them with furious speed. Shukaku reacted second, spikes of earth spearing up from the ground beneath the fleeing figures- and missing .

They didn't even dodge- the spikes just missed. He threw a few more attacks at them, watching only one of them hit- he wasn't sure how he'd managed such a remarkably low accuracy, that their assailants were getting away. It was as if they simply weren't where he saw them-

Genjutsu .

With a furious roar and a sweep of powerful killing intent he shattered the thin layer of chakra that had subtly crept over his own, as remarkable for its strength as its subtlety. "Genjutsu!"

Tora nodded in understanding- " kai! " Her chakra flickered fitfully, the delicate weave of chakra that had surrounded them both shuddering and collapsing inwards on itself at the second axis of disruption. "These aren't Sabaku nin."

Shukaku gritted his sand in understanding, a portion of his form flowing out to surround Okimi in a perfect shell, powerful barriers humming to life across its form. With the girl safe within his perfect defense he directed his attention back to the battle, catching one of the black haired shinobi on a rock-spear and gutting another with a blast of wind.

Competent did not even begin to describe how well the unit moved- each action fluid into the next, nary a weakness between their perfect motion. Their kenjutsu was impeccable- each blow slicing into his sand so powerfully, always exploiting the weaknesses between the scything blades of wind and piercing spikes, clearly superior to Tora's own. Her sand, at least, kept her safe from most of the more vicious attacks-

A fireball flew past his hand, furious heat only barely deflected by a wave of Tora's sand- the desperate move opening her up to a counterattack from the side. Shukaku grasped hold of the sand littering the ground around the descending blade and reshaped- lines to lines, smudges to swirling characters until a violet barrier sprung up just in time to block the sword's blow.

This was getting nowhere- scoffing, Shukaku pulled deeply at the earth, brining it into an immense wave that blotted out the sun above them. Subtlety was for losers who didn't have a bijuu's chakra reserves, anyways.

In the sudden shadow of earth, he could see them- bloodred like memory, terror and clawing- and anger - and suddenly their enemies' competence made a lot more sense. Scarlet, bloody red sharingan lit the darkness, tomoe revolving in furious loops- blurring in their intensity as they shunshined out of the way.

Shukaku slammed his eyes shut, grasping onto Tora with a tendril of sand and throwing her into behind his shield with Okimi. Don't look them in the eyes . He stared at their nin, maw opened wide- chakra swirling in endless rotation, five and one-

The original Ichibi had some weak air blast as his most powerful- excluding his bijuudama- technique. Shukaku neither wanted something like that nor had the depth of experience in jutsu creation to even make much beyond wind chakra controlled purely on the basis of practice and willpower. He did have a different technique, though- stolen from the future, taken to its logical extreme from the past.

Pure chakra manifested in front of his maw- like a bijuudama but not , five spinning orbs orbiting another within the center of a single overarching shell. " Amenomihashira! " There was a single second before the attack shot out, and then the forest around them was light, sound, and the stoic pain of dying Uchiha.

A minute after the explosions died down he unraveled the seals on his sand prison, revealing a slightly shaking Tora and a terrified Okimi who immediately bowled into him with a tight embrace. "The bad sand men got badder! And less sandy!"

He shared a grim look with Tora, whose half furious, half concerned expression revealed she knew exactly the significance of the attack. "Ah… Okimi, those were the… bad funny eyes men." Indra would be rolling in his grave if he heard that, and Fugaku in his… many-greats grandmother's sparkling eyes? The expression had already failed in translation, no need to break it even more.

Still, as Okimi nodded in solemn acceptance, he knew he was going to tell this to Kokuo, and the horse was going to die of laughter. Even Tora quirked a smile, some of the tension from the sudden combat relaxed at the absurdity of the statement. Still, it didn't completely relax the focus in her eyes, the twitchy way she glanced at the shadows around them as if wondering if the Uchiha could survive one of the strongest attacks ever made.

Well, with Izanagi, they probably could have. "We need to leave, right now. The sharingan is… bad news." Very bad news- the gentjutsu able to affect even him and his powerful resistance was clearly example enough for how dangerous it could be.

Tora nodded in determination, the half of her reaction that had been fear fading to resolve- for Okimi, if nothing else. Even as blood dripped slowly from the gashes along her side and the burn on the side of her face crinkled in a way that must have been painful, she swept Okimi up into her arms and bounded into the trees.

A tendril of sand swept in front of her and shattered into a web weaved in barrier seals, halting her forward momentum just as quickly as it'd started. She twirled in fury, only for Shukaku's serious stare to bring her to a halt. "What? You were the one saying we needed to go."

"No." He looked pointedly over his shoulder, holding out a hand to the kunoichi. "You just assumed that leaving meant running ." He looked at her with a deep gaze, expectant, for a moment longer before sighing in exasperation. Some people just didn't understand… "get on. We're going fast ."

Tora's eyes widened. "Are you sure? I… got the impression that you'd hate being ridden -"

"Well, you're not riding me any more than Okimi was riding you just now." He paused for a second- "unless you need something suitably impressive to brag about one day. Then you can say you rode the Ichibi."

Okimi stared up at his towering form, wide eyes sparkling with earnest excitement. "You're going to carry us? This is going to be so- so much fun! " She cheered, squirming gently in Tora's grasp to get at him quicker.

"On second thought…"

Her eyes widened even further in betrayed horror. "No! Quick mom! Go go-" Tora rolled her eyes and bounded up his arm, shooting him a thankful glance as Okimi jabbered on- the battle mere seconds ago all but forgotten.

They settled into the space between his ears, Tora crouched with carefully adhesive chakra, Okimi held firmly in place by Shukaku's sand-

Then they were running , fire country blurring behind them like so many forgotten dreams and shattered trees- to Uzushio, with speed.

………

They cornered them at the coast, where the crashing waves met the end of the forest in misty breath, sandy beaches nestled between sea-slick stones. The air tasted of salt and charged chakra and a hint of determined desperation. They weren't even trying to be subtle; fifteen men in light battle armor, three of which were clearly an ino-shika-cho trio, chakra crackling in faint unease as he skidded to a stop in front of them.

He didn't have time for this- battle, or the pursuit he'd have to endure if continued past them. Killing intent blanketed the air; the strength of a bijuu, the distilled power that one night in Konoha's future had rendered thousands catatonic with fear, sharpened with an actual target and intent.

The Uchiha arrayed against him knew that he wanted to kill him- as surely as the sun rose, they knew they would die. "Get out of our way." His voice was like the crack of thunder, deep and so sharp- "you cannot possibly hope to stop us- I'll give you the chance to leave with your lives intact."

The lead Uchiha smirked- it was like Indra in his worst days, his emotions ever so slightly wrong . Arrogance instead of excitement- it seemed his ideology ran true even now. "We've been paid enough to fund the entire clan for twenty years for the successful capture of one you two." At least his robe- black and tasteful dark blue, Uchiha fan emblazoned on the back and gold thread stitched with careful hydrophobic barrier seals across its edges- was nice and suitably arrogant. "After all, a kekkei genkai which can control the Ichibi is very valuable indeed. "

Oh . He saw where they were coming from now- it even made sense, if he squinted, turned his head a bit, forgot sentience was a thing people could have, and adopted an arrogance to rival Indra's. Controlling him would be a good enough motive to hire what felt like the entire Uchiha clan to hunt them down.

"Very well then." He tried, and failed, to keep his mirth contained, but if his visible amusement seemed to intimidate them more than the full force of his killing intent, well… "lets dance." Sand exploded outwards in every direction from his form as the ninja flickered away, small blades curving away to follow the enemy nin under Tora's control as he focused on laying down a seal.

Five seconds. That was all the time it took for his sand to shift shape into well practiced characters, a three-layered barrier seal forming in his mind and impressing itself onto the world- and a pink barrier flared into existence, a perfect rectangle of chakra shooting up a thousand feet into the air. The sound of the Akimichi smashing into the sudden obstacle, and the muffled curses of the ino-shika, was music to his ears. The carefully ignored glares and soft, angry scoffs from the Uchiha even moreso.

They were trapped, and they knew it.

Fire release ninjutsu flared in tandem with a powerful wind-release, slamming against a wave of sand and melting it to slag and glass. It was a good enough strategy- sand release relied on the mobility of the earth particles, flowing smoothly with wind chakra- and it probably would have worked on almost any other sand user- but Shukaku was no ordinary shinobi .

He was the Ichibi, and in five centuries of experience with increasingly fine control exercises was a supreme mastery over his element. A flex of earth chakra- twisting inwards on itself like a rasengan, propagated throughout the entire glass sculpture like a sealing network- shattered it to a fine dust which neatly separated in two to crash down against the two Uchiha.

Then it exploded, because explosive seals were the best thing, and as he saw the two shinobi disappear in a flurry of sharp glass and blood, he couldn't have been more proud of himself for inventing them.

Two more Uchiha fell beneath Tora's blade and the powerful explosive seals he'd etched onto her kunai before the enemy managed to regroup and start recovering. A chakra-empowered kick to his side- from the fancy-robed man- was forceful enough to actually stagger him a bit, and it was enough for the Nara to grab his shadow for a single moment and force him to look into the Yamanaka's eyes.

Big mistake .

He could feel the woman's soul yank at his own in an attempt to replace it- but she tried to pull at a soul that spanned the universe, an immortal law written into the nature of chakra, and something there didn't compute. To make a long story short, her brain turned to liquid, and Shukaku barely even stumbled at the assault. There were probably other Yamanaka jutsu that would have worked better, but… well, he'd take the free victory.

His tail crashed down on the staggered Nara, smashing him into the bedrock alongside the two Uchiha shinobi who thought a collaborative barrier jutsu would be enough against several tons of sand moving faster than terminal velocity. With his chakra mostly free for a single moment he let it swirl in the eddying complexity of an amenomihashira, its brilliant intensity hanging in the air between him and them .

He almost laughed as fancy-robe Uchiha threw a wave of blazing black Amaterasu towards him- amenomihashira had been built specifically to counter far more powerful versions of that technique, and the five interior spheres ripped through the startled Uchiha forces in a spray of blood and sojourning bones who, for some reason, decided the open air was a nice place to be this time of year. " Die! Amenomihashira!" Another brilliant blue sphere smashed into where fancy-robe was standing, tearing the last remaining Uchiha by his side limb from limb even as he barely dodged.

"You've made an enemy of the Uchiha clan for this, woman!" Well, at least they didn't hold it against Shukaku personally. He'd hate to get on the wrong side of the funny eye men. Fancy-robe barely dodged out of the blast radius of a seal before sliding neatly into a chain shunshins, flickering between the treetops as Shukaku slowly marched seals in intricate lines of sand across every surface.

Speed was annoying, he decided, when he couldn't just bijuudama the whole area and be done with it. Trapped in his barrier as he was, he'd eventually make a mistake- and then they'd be free.

It happened, four and a half minutes into his mad sprint- he stepped on an explosive seal and shunshined out of the way with admirable- but not quick enough to avoid a painful burn scorched onto his leg. Desperation and anger wrote themselves deeply in the lines around his eyes, chakra burning with fear and anger - a cornered animal, claws shining sharp beneath the impossibility of his escape.

It was just enough to make him do something stupid- his eyes gravitated to the only surface that didn't have seals written across it in spiraling, delicate script- Shukaku . To the rational mind, it wouldn't have even been an option- Shukaku could clearly manipulate his sand with incredible precision, and his back was his sand . He didn't even have to move it- all he had to do was make a seal.

To a desperate Uchiha on the verge of death, all other options exhausted, it looked like paradise.

Opportunity.

With a burst of smoke he shunshined off the tree he'd retreated to, little more than a faint blur in the air as he jumped onto Shukaku's back and raced up towards where Okimi had been watching the battle with horrified attention- the fullness of his chakra burning bright for just that small iota of extra speed -

Three steps, three small shunshins, and he'd crossed the entirety of Shukaku's back, arms outreached in malicious glee- just for an explosive seal to trigger beneath him, blasting his legs to pulp and shards of bone as his torso skidded to a stop mere feet in front of Okimi.

He looked down the bijuu's immense eye below, grinning madly, chakra seething in pain and terror- in victory . "You… are a fool, to oppose the Uchiha clan heir." Blood dribbled from his mouth as he laughed, insane and so deadly sure- "the Uchiha… love, hate beyond death. Izanagi! "

The very air seemed to split- like killing intent but more , the ultimate genjutsu distorting reality as a dream asserted its righteous sovereignty over existence itself. A single action- erased, rewritten in all its myriad possibility- a wish made manifest. In one reality fancy-robes had been blasted to pieces by an explosive seal- and in another, he wrapped his arms around Okimi and shunshined a hundred feet to the ground in a single moment.

A kunai pressed roughly to the frozen girl's stomach, hard enough to draw blood. "Tell your dog to heel , woman, or else… the Sabaku only need one of you." Tora shot Shukaku a desperate, pleading look, but he was already settling uneasily onto the ground, tail wrapped around his hands. "Good. Good- if I so much as see a grain of sand twitch , then I'm sure your little six your old would love the taste of a real explosive seal."

"I'm eight…"

"Shut up brat!" She shut up. "Now- instruct the beast carefully- tell it to look into my eyes." Shukaku's sand stilled in horrified shock.

A choice.

Freedom in the eyes of another, or dominion for a life.

He loved Okimi… but it was really no choice at all. Clearly Tora recognized it too- letting the Uchiha trap him in a mangekyou genjutsu was as good as handing him a bag of bijuudama and telling him to go wild.

Neither of them would survive that.

Shukaku slowly began to stitch the smallest, most subtle explosive he could seal on fancy-robe's neck, each grain of sand moving so very subtly as they pressed themselves together. The show he made of resisting Tora's control all the while was probably… not very convincing.

"You have ten seconds before she starts losing fingers, woman . Ten-" Shukaku strained to keep his killing intent in- he just needed a bit more time! "Nine." He scraped at the very depths of his chakra control, pulling a hundred grains of sand at a time, in unique patterns- "eight." Fancy-robes positioned her hand above her heart- an assurance and a warning, and a punishment- "seven." Fifteen seconds! For the first time in decades, he cursed insufficient chakra control. "Six-"

An instant passed- less than a second for Tora to flick through the hand seals for the body replacement, and in a puff of smoke a shell-shocked Okimi collapsed to the ground where moments before Tora had been standing in terrified determination.

It happened too fast for him to do anything , and it was in moments like this his old inferiority complex reared his head with a vengeance. He'd been right when he'd thought these two were walking trauma triggers- Tora appeared where Okimi had been standing, body already blurring with a samurai's speed as she stabbed her sword through his remaining sharingan-

And fancy-robe's kunai dragged a line from shoulder to hip, gutting her open.

" Mom! " Shukaku restrained Okimi from jumping to her death with a hasty sand coffin, but he himself was already skidding to a stop beside the dying woman. She wasn't supposed to die. She was supposed to live- in Uzushio, where she and her daughter would have been safe . Idotic Uchiha…

"Hey…" her voice was weak, but somehow still bright- unshed tears prickling at the edges of her eyes. "It's not your fault… that the Uchiha are bastards." Yeah. They really were. "Take… take good care of Okimi for me? She… she really likes you. You'll be good for her…"

Shukaku shook his head wildly- that would be giving up . "No- no- I've only raised two children in my life, and both of them tried to kill me- I'll be terrible ."

Tora laughed, but it came out more as a choking gurgle. "I… believe in yourself… don't think I've ever met someone so powerful with so little self-confidence…" her smile grew fixed, breathing labored. "Hey… has the sun ever seemed so bright… the earth so green… the ocean… glittering sunset running. Love you, Okimi. Love you, love you… love…"

"No. No. I don't allow it !" He pulled at the depths of memories from a time before, pulled at the depths of his chakra as he gently lifted her off the ground, sand scouring the earth for all that'd been lost. "You will not die !" Slowly, he stepped out onto the water and started to run . "Please- please, just hold on. For Okimi." The body gave no response.

Sand whirled around her in ever-dizzying patterns, seals forming and fading as fast as he could think- anything, everything to keep her alive just a moment longer. A thousand small, flexible barriers, holding her steady and patching the myriad holes in her gut, a seal to bind her blood to her body, a modified wind-release exploding tag with a cyclical dampening matrix to smooth out the chakra flow, two peaks in line with with the beating of her heart.

It was the beating of her heart.

Waves crashed beneath his feet as he hurtled over the ocean to Uzushiogakure, each loping step of his sprint casting explosions of spray into the cloudy ocean air. He couldn't be bothered to hide his presence- as though anyone would see him on the open sea- instead focusing his entire attention onto the elaborate seal network plastered over her body.

A seal to cycle the bypass the ruined, flooded alveoli in the lungs, an oxygen-permeable barrier and chakra-release seal keyed to her chakra network, to keep everything moving.

Reinforcing seals across the broken ribs, binding them together.

Chakra storage seals inscribed across her chakra network, to bridge the gaps where intense trauma had torn the pathways asunder. Still no matter how much he wrote, there were still things he couldn't solve- he had no ability to disinfect the wounds, nor the lightning-release seals he'd need to fix the frankly bewildering damage to her nervous system. There was only so much his limited sensing ability could help him with, and he couldn't help but feel as though her life was slipping through his fingers.

Onwards, he ran- the sheer speed of his enhanced sprint bleeding a faint haze of golden-brown chaka into the air, a pressure that sent the wildlife around him fleeing against the Juubi's toxic influence.

The first sign he was approaching Uzushiokagure was the immense sealing barrier that rose from the waves, shimmering iridescent in the dying sunlight. Even at the speed he was going it was almost laughably easy to bypass- sand slammed out against it, flickering into a faint few characters that matched the barrier's frequency and short-circuited the released chakra before it could reach the receptors and manifest a barrier.

The second and third barriers were much the same, if progressively more powerful and complex. The fourth was inspired- a bastardized cyclical release seal that ever so slightly changed the chakra's frequency as it looped through the barrier. It could do with some variability, but were he not so rushed he'd marvel over its austere efficacy.

Uzushiokagure loomed over the horizon, a colorful speck on the ocean tucked behind a scintillating red barrier. Shukaku spared the thought to twist his chakra this way , then that , and finally there- just like how Tora had shown him, willing with all his terrible desire to make her live .

A simple henge into a normal, if gigantic, tanuki had nothing against his sheer desire to keep Tora alive .

If the fourth barrier had been inspired, the fifth was awe inspiring- a mad mishmash of uncountable techniques that somehow only reinforce each other, flowing together with no rhyme or reason to create a powerful whole. The sheer randomness of its movement meant the basic bypass technique he'd been using wouldn't work- if he had a few minutes, he probably could have found a weak point between the components- but he didn't have a few minutes.

Well, bijuudama was the bijuu's solution to everything.

As they barrier flickered and collapsed under the strain of two- small- bijuudama and vaporized seawater splashed down over the city he leapt across the sentinel sealing spires which had anchored the main barrier, over the past few hundred feet to the island itself, and skidded to a stop in front of a regiment of shockingly colorful shinobi.

The leader was pointing a trident at him, and in his exhausted state the only thing he could think of was- whoa. Absolutely awesome. "...hurt shinobi." He gulped in a- wholly unnecessary- breath, letting his chakra settle from the long run. "We were seeking refuge in Uzushio from wind country nin, and were attacked by Uchiha shinobi at the coast. Tora was critically wounded." Gently- so very gently- he levitated her to the beach on a platform of sand. "Please, please heal her. And… uh, sorry for breaking your barrier."

The lead Uzumaki glanced to where Okimi sat tearfully on his back, then leaned on her trident looking throughly disgruntled. "Fine." Two shinobi shunshined out from behind the front lines, hands glowing the aquamarine of primitive medical chakra. "I don't get how you got through the main barrier." Her voice was a low grumble, but still clear enough that it was obvious she wanted her griping to be heard. "It's supposed to be strong enough to stand against a rampaging bijuu ."

No, thought Shukaku in giddy, wry humor. It really isn't.

One of the doctors flicked through hand-seals for some sort of medical jutsu, seals on her arms lighting up brilliant blue as she pressed her palms against Tora's chest. A long second passed as her eyes grew progressively wider and wider. " Kami - who the hell made these seals? She should have died hours ago!"

The trident-kunoichi snapped to attention, kicking a few shinobi out of the way as she knelt down beside Tora. "Move over, brat- let me see-" chakra flared around her hands, her own set of seals flickering pale blue across her arms. "Get your chakra out of the way! No, the diagnosis, keep healing idiot! I'm… woah. Those are some seriously complicated seals… three dimensional matrices? Sand ? How long did these take?"

Minutes for the major ones. Hours for the entire life-support network. "Months of careful preparation," he lied.

Trident-kunoichi- he was seriously beginning to suspect she was the clan head- narrowed her eyes. "I didn't know the tanuki summons were so good at sealing."

"Yeah. That's… we're underestimated sometimes." Well, if she fell for his cover without him even needing to say it, then all the better for him.

She scoffed, leaning away from Tora's still, unconscious, breathing body. "Well, I'm no medic-"

"Then, with all due respect Ayaka-sama, shut up ." The second doctor met trident-kunoichi's- Ayaka's- scathing glare with a furious disinterest that screamed of long, long practice. "She'll live, most likely. No promises if she'll ever walk again, and she definitely won't be an active shinobi. Any strenuous chakra usage will probably snap the seals holding her chakra network together-" the expression on her face that said she was absolutely done with the random impossibility of that particular fact- "and snap her chakra network with the rebound in turn. Intensive care, for her." A shinobi stepped forward, only to be whacked over the head and chastised to be careful this time as he knelt down to take her to the hospital.

She'd live.

She'd live. It was enough- for once, outside fate- just once he hadn't failed someone. Damaged, wounded- but she'd live.

They'd made it to sanctuary at Uzushio. He couldn't help but relax in exhaustion, sweeping Okimi into the embrace she desperately needed after the last few traumatic hours. They'd made it. They'd made it- to refuge. To safety- and despite his exhaustion he could only beam at the swirling, cloudy sky in giddy happiness.

Ayaka spun away from the doctor-shinobi duo as they absconded with Tora, turning to Shukaku with a saccharine smile plastered over her face- the sort of grin to inspire true dread amongst those who saw it. She cracked her knuckles, and leant nonchalantly against her trident- a master of Uzumaki brusque intimidation, really. "So, say, sir tanuki boss summon… I was wondering a bit about those very valuable wards you blew up on the way in…"

Shukaku whimpered.Chapter 10: Sealing Fate

Summary:

That hadn't… exactly been what he'd expected, but the Uzumaki had always been a bit insane.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

To their credit, thought Shukaku as a particularly old Uzumaki stared at him from across the seaside cave he'd conquered for himself, they'd at least waited for Tora to wake up before virtually punting this grandma at him. Her gaze was pretty piercing… she'd do well in interrogation, probably.

Or, what counted for interrogation amongst the Uzumaki. "So. Shukaku!" She clapped her hands together, and Shukaku didn't take the sparks of blue that traveled through her seals as anything less than a threat. "I have a question for you- who are you, really?"

"Ah, funny you ask that… I'm the boss summon of the-"

"No. No you're not." She leveled him a glare more intimidating than the clan head's. "You see, I have a… unique information source that's been able to reveal to me that you're lying. They're very perceptive- it really took a lot for them to figure it out." She flicked through a set of hand seals before slamming a palm onto the floor. "Summoning jutsu!" The fading smoke revealed more or less exactly what he'd been expecting-

A pair of small tanuki looked at him with barely constrained curiosity, and Shukaku knew his luck had to run out sometime. The smaller of the pair padded up to him and pressed her hand into his henged fur, face scrunching up in distaste as she lightly pawed at the sensation. "You need to wash. Also, you're too big if you're pretending to be Chairo-sama. He's like-" she shakily balanced on her hind legs, throwing her paws wide- "that big, you know?" Shukaku did not, in fact, know.

"Drop the henge, brat."

"Hey! I'm older than you." A raised eye was the only answer to that statement. "Fine." He just let go of the warped chakra that'd been folding his form into its current unnatural state.

He had to say, the look of shock on the elderly Uzumaki's face as the Ichibi appeared in front of her in a poof of sand was so, so satisfying. Still, she recovered remarkably well from the sudden appearance of a tailed beast in front of her.

The tanuki duo… not so much. The smaller one just pawed at his sand again, face wrinkling further. "Your fur is gone. Fur loss can be a big problem! I just-" she was cut off with a yelp as the larger of the two grabbed her by the scruff and threw her back. "Hey!"

"The big tanuki turned into a bigger sand tanuki . Its chakra's scary!"

"Well, I was talking about fur care! You know how important that is- and he just lost his-"

"He's made of sand- "

Shukaku just glanced to the elderly woman, who'd pinched the bridge of her nose in exasperation from the start of the conversation. "I'm not sure if I ever expected to agree with a bijuu on something, but… if it had to be anything, it would be how annoying the duo are."

"We're not annoying!"

The elder brother nodded resolutely. "Yeah!"

"Go home, brats." A soft sigh of relief was the only sound in the bar the ceaseless lapping of seawater in the moment after two small puffs of smoke erupted around the two, their forms dragged back to the tanuki's realm. "So… bijuu. Of all the things that I was expecting, that wasn't one. Especially not wind country's bijuu. Answer me truthfully- why did you come to Uzushiogakure?"

"You know that." He could see it in her eyes- the slight guilt that showed she understood , even if she refused to truly believe it. "I came here for Okimi's sake. My brother recommended Uzushiogakure as a good location to bring them."

"Brother as…"

"The Hachibi."

"Right." There- he hadn't known there was a patented Uzumaki I'm-so-done-with-this expression, but between the woman in front of him and the doctor from before, he was starting to see a pattern- "as in, the same Hachibi that teamed up with the Nibi to beat the Kyuubi into the ground and destroy half the land of noodles? By that matter, how did you get through the first four barriers? They're not broken like the fifth."

Shukaku gave her a long-suffering look . As if there was another Hachibi… the elder at least had the decency to look a little bit embarrassed. "Sealing, obviously. So far, by my standards, Uzumaki sealing is ridiculous backwards."

The elder practically bristled at the insinuation their seals were anything less than cutting edge, a faint tinge of actual killing intent flickering into the space between them for a single moment before disappearing as fast as it came. "You're a brat, you know? Here's a bet, then-" she looked at him, so incredibly smugly- "rebuild the fifth barrier in a month. If it's stronger than before, then I'll teach you uzumaki script. I'll even keep your… nature… a secret. But if it's worse , then you have to tell me exactly how you got through the barriers, and how you made those medical seals." A supreme confidence positively dripped off her form- as if she couldn't imagine a universe in which a foreign sealp-master could possibly complete such a task.

Shukaku just grinned, suspicions of ancestral genealogies for one Senju Tsunade flickering in the back of his mind.

………

Two weeks later, a gaping elder Akane stood beside an equally incredulous Ayaka as their strongest attacks slid off a brilliant garnet barrier with neither a ripple nor crack marring its perfect form. It shone like a perfect sheet of perfect glass, its faint glow casting an eerily uniform light across the entire city, its many colorful buildings strangely uniform in the harshness of the light.

An immense tidal wave washed against the shield, eliciting nothing more than a faint increase in its scarlet luminescence. "This- no . I refuse to believe that some brat managed to make a seal better than the grand barrier in under a month." The elder, Akane, screeched in half-hearted, weary frustration before summoning her chakra again- very, very dense chakra- slamming it down onto the barrier in the shape of four massive golden chains.

To almost any other seal the shattering techniques she'd imbued into the golden links would have torn it asunder in a single hit, disrupting the internal chakra pathways and cascading a failure along the entire network. This seal, though, had been carefully made with as many layers of security as he could possibly fit into it.

Two weeks was a truly long amount of time to give to someone who could have replaced their original barrier with one just as strong in two and half hours, maximum.

A dense web of tripwire barriers flickered into visibility for a second as the chains broke through them- nonexistent to normal ninjustu, but just present enough to fuuinjutsu for a brute force technique to snap them like fine glass.

Fire erupted beneath the chains, brilliant white and searingly even from their distance over the whirlpool-ridden sea. Akane began to sweat as her chakra sharpened , pushing just a little closer to the seal under the pure force of her willpower. Three seconds, four- then the chains shattered into glittering dust and she collapsed, Ayaka just barely catching Akane before she could fall into the crashing waves beneath them. When the trident-wielding kunoichi looked up at him, it was with a look of excited, inquisitive awe .

Really, the idea behind the technique wasn't even complicated- if something designed specifically to break seals was flying at a seal, just don't let it get there . No advanced defenses required.

Three hours later, when Akane crawled out of unconsciousness by dint of sheer grit to a city bathed in natural moonlight and seal distinctly missing, the first thing she asked was whether she'd managed to destroy it.

Shukaku gave Okimi a pat on the head and the honorable sacrifice of telling her she hadn't.

………

They stood on a small sandbar far beyond the first sealing barrier, cerulean ocean blue lapping in every direction, forever- an eternity of water, glittering against the noonday sun. Far beneath the waves the faintest flickers of color reflected off chaotic waters, flashes of coral and darting fish dipping into the ancient bones of the earth beneath them.

The wind was the sky around them, and the sky was free.

Akane stood still on the small lone patch of sparse grass, neatly cut battle-robes fluttering behind her in the ocean breeze- a spot of vibrant color amidst the eternities of blue and sandy brown. "To know Uzumaki sealing is to know the history of the clan; to know the history of the clan is to know Uzumaki sealing." Her voice was solemn- weary almost, though against her usual personality he could certainly see how the formality grated. "In remembering our past, we chart our future as did our ancestors through the maelstrom around the isle; in knowing our futures we seal our destines. How much do you know about uzumaki history?"

A bird circled above them with a lonely cry, white plumage indistinct against the cloud speckled sky. A fish darted up to where he lay in the water- larger than the sandbar itself- before fliting away, to the unknowable circle of existence ever looping. "Not much." That was a lie-

Akane just nodded with solemn acceptance. "I expected as much. So, the legends are like this- listen closely, cause' I'm not going to repeat them, brat! So, in the far past, the Sage of Six Paths had two children. The first, conceited and cruel, gave rise to the Uchiha and their cursed eyes. The second, fair and magnanimous, gave rise to the Senju, and later, the Uzumaki clans."

Shukaku ducked his head beneath the waves to keep from laughing. It was just so hard to imagine Asura as calm and magnanimous - he wasn't collected even when he killed him. Indra… well, Zetsu's manipulations had turned him cruel indeed.

A thick chakra chain whacked him on the head before yanking it out of the water. "Are you paying attention, brat? Hey, this manhandling bijuu thing is kind of fun, isn't it?"

Shukaku opened his mouth to protest, thought back to the many times he'd beat Kokuo into the ground and gotten slammed around in turn, and decided not to comment.

"Eh, so as I was saying before you decided to teach yourself water ninjutsu, there's these two kid demigods, get in a spat cause' one of them's evil, huge war and now the Senju and Uchiha hate each other. Around this point in time, Senju Arashi got into a disagreement with the rest of his clan upon the death of his father; he demanded the clan continue onto peace, while the rest of the Senju sought war. As the legend goes, Arashi took his sister and the few of the clan who still sought a simple life and sailed the open seas until they found Uzushio, upon which they founded Uzushiogakure."

That made a… surprisingly large amount of sense. The few rare Senju he'd had the misfortune of running across had been more or less normal- extremely advanced, and their consistent earth and water releases spoke of at least some of Asura's legacy, but it was nothing compared to the sheer random power of the sharingan. The copy wheel eye that allowed a single clan and their scant allies to beat the Senju time and time again until their immense war was but a simmering feud.

The Uzumaki were the ones with his father's bloodline. "...and Arashi settled on the coast, and I'm going to whack you with my chain." She then proceeded to whack him with her chain, which was surprisingly painful as it rattled over his head. "Clearly this isn't interesting to you-"

He rapidly shook his head, perhaps in subconscious fear of another chain strike, but mostly at missing out on such a fascinating history. A fair bit of things made a lot more sense, considering.

Akane grumbled something incoherent, rolling her eyes and letting her chain rattle back into her chakra network. "Well, that's already everything really important. Eh… we were neutral before the empire fell- a gang of samurai can beat up a shinobi clan, but no amount of samurai could batter down our seals. They just had to suck it up and let us do our own thing." She clapped her hands together excitedly, a truly excessive aura of excitement bubbling up from her chakra. "Now, the real reason I took you out to this random island- seals!"

………

If his work with the Uzumaki barriers had given him a poor preconception of the famed Uzumaki sealing, then the first time Akane teleported an entire reef on top of his head disabused him thoroughly of the notion. The various other eclectic techniques that somehow, impossibly, built together to make a cohesive sealing form spoke of a truly innovative clan that wasn't afraid to jump into the hardest, most indecipherable parts of the parent storage seal and eagerly rip logic to shreds.

He shuddered to think of how many times the island must have been exploded. There were few times he was more thankful for his past life's knowledge than when he watched a laughing ball of insanity show him seals to affect the soul , held together with spit, inconsistent nomenclature, and delicately applied killing intent of all things.

Still, there was just much there- he'd forgotten just how fun it was to speak seals with people who had unique perspectives on the art.

Time passed quickly, and yet- so very slowly. Each happy moment felt like it could last forever, yet always ended too fast-

Uzushiogakure was a pleasant place to call home.

………

Ten year old Okimi hadn't given up on the tanuki ears. By popular Uzumaki consensus- something quite difficult to get in the chaotic, ever-vibrant, alive city, it was adorable, which was probably half the reason she'd stuck to it. Nevertheless, her henge was incredibly good- Akane's summons had helped her get it down to the exact detail- more an art than anything else.

Shukaku had to agree. As Okimi kicked at the sand on the beach, ears flattened against her head and grumbling something incoherent about how she was supposed to have been meeting up with some friend or another later in the day, cute was probably how he'd describe it.

Akane stood of to the side, gruff as always, looking as though she was seconds away from whacking the both of them with her chains. "Okimi. You're going to learn sealing . That's important."

"Don't wanna. Can I learn the fishing game with my friends first?" A faint twitch fluttered across Akane's jaw, prime warning that if Shukaku wanted her unnamed- " ow! That's no fair- I don't have cool shiny chains and stuff! And you broke the henge!" Ah. Well, the bridge of peaceful training sessions had already been left behind and ignored. Or burnt, depending on Akane's mood.

" Brat . You're here to learn Shukaku's sealing style." The interested glint in her eyes pretty clearly said that Akane was here to learn Shukaku's sealing style, and had only just barely consented for him to teach it to Okimi first.

Okimi blinked, then looked at him with a grin that could outshine the sun. "Why didn't you say so old woman! This is going to be awesome . Can you-" babbling again. Then the chain. He could already see a pattern in how these interactions were going to go.

Ponderously he raised an immense paw, shadow a pointed reminder for silence. "Sealing is a complicated science, Okimi, and one that demands absolute attention to detail unless you've developed a hidden desire to be exploded."

"Um. No. I'd rather not."

"Good. Then listen to Akane when she's teaching you. But listen to me more, because I'm right and she's not." He couldn't resist throwing a snide glance to the elder, who stuck out her tongue at him in petulant anger. "I use seals differently from the Uzumaki. Their technique involves tattooing a specific seal onto their skin, then applying that seal with inkless chakra to most any surface." A tendril of sand dripped off the palm of his hand in shadow, writhing- "I, on the other hand, use sand manipulation to make any seal in sand." The chakra froze in a shape of eddying characters and rippling lines, flickering the ruddy golden brown of his chakra for a single second before it began to glow with a brilliant white light.

Okimi's positively bounced up and down in excitement, eyes sparkling brightly. "Whoa. Can you teach me that?"

Shukaku nodded, so faintly smiling. "Your kekkei genkai is sand release, so yes- I can." He lifted an orb of sand from the beach, carefully pulling out the silicates and depositing them into Okimi's hand. "Let me go through a few exercises I used when I was building control…"

………

Two years later Okimi made her first seal in sand- an exploding tag that actually managed to explode when she wanted it to- and Akane was ecstatic enough at her progress to throw her a small party on the beach. Even Tora, weak as she still was, managed to get someone to carry her down from the infirmary.

Shukaku attended, too- henged into his tanuki-form, settled just offshore in the swirling waters and just… enjoying the atmosphere, the inane chatter and petty, pointless arguments that wouldn't ever have an impact on their relationships.

He hadn't been to a party like this since before his father died.

The burning sun and seaside cool, the tug of water, the faint hum of powerful chakra drifting through the air, unworried, excited … Tora and Okimi, standing together as the younger struggled to make a seal with her henge on…

So many little moments. Peaceful moments, here so far from the violent tumult of the continent.

It felt like freedom.

It was what he was fighting for.

………

"The three skies formation interconnects with Kei's fourth fundamental to smooth the chakra flow and extend the opening of the dimensional storage such that it can be safely traversed without a powerful barrier…"

Shukaku resisted the urge to groan. How the Uzumaki managed to do anything with their seals, he didn't think he'd ever know. " Draw them out , please. I need to see the thought process."

Akane rolled her eyes, but complied nonetheless, sketching out a cyclical chakra dampening matrix and a collection of some interior symbols that related- somehow- to spacetime. "There. Recognize these now?"

He nodded his head slightly. "I use the first fairly extensively in my barriers to moderate chakra flow. The second… not so much." He sketched them out in sand, trying to piece together just where they'd been ripped out from the progenitor seal. "They're… part of the actual sealing matrix… where the chakra is most active when material is actively being transported in and out of the seal?"

"What'd you call them, then?"

"The first would be a cyclical chakra dampening matrix. The second would probably be a… space-time set? I'm not entirely sure what to call these Uzumaki not-quite matrices that include multiple characters. Components?"

Akane was silent for a long moment, frown sharp enough to chisel mountains. "...I'll admit, brat, that maybe your sealing script has at least one thing better than uzumaki script. For all its ridiculous limitations, it certainly calls things how it is." Yes, it did, and logical consistency went a long way to explaining seals comprehensively.

Wary of the chain, Shukaku didn't dare voice that thought aloud. "The main difference between our styles is method. I've remained fairly organized in my extrapolation, as opposed to the Uzumaki…"

"Glorious chaos? Magnificent madness?" Akane cackled as her chains carefully began to draw out all the myriad space-time symbols they knew. "I just say it how it is." It was more than that, really- the vast majority of the time he spent with fuuinjutsu was ensuring that everything he knew was logically consistent with the overarching theory of it all. Knowing the theory behind sealwork was half the reason his barriers were as strong as they were.

Then Akane started channeling chakra into the seals on the sand, things started exploding, and his musing on the differences between his sealing and the Uzumaki's was cut rather abruptly short.

………

When Okimi turned sixteen Ayaka took her to the highest spire of Uzushio, alone, and when she came back two and half days later- clothes ragged, dripping wet, and grinning with unhidable glee, she wore the name Uzumaki Okimi with pride.

Shukaku took her aside to his and Akane's broken isle, past the beached reefs, craters and shards of glass, and began to teach her the mathematical basis behind the mysticism that was sealing.

When she turned twenty, his first original space-time seal was scribed down onto a scroll and committed to the archives under Uzumaki Akane's name. To his infinite chagrin, he'd been forced to use the random, nonsensical uzumaki sealing patterns to get the aperture to stabilize for long enough. Clearly his theory needed some work before it could account for the sheer randomness that was space-time sealing.

Just after Okimi's twenty-first birthday, he learnt that if the random rules of space-time sealing were nonsensical and frustrating, there probably weren't even words strong enough to describe how much worse it was with seals that affected the soul. A mix of intent, endless chains of truly random operations, and seal characters that were completely unlike anything he'd ever seen before.

Akane just laughed and laughed at his endlessly bitter complaints.

When Okimi was twenty-five, she was married to a particularly gregarious Uzumaki sealmaster beneath the springtime scent of blossoms and salty wind- and a memory he'd never forget was how content they'd both looked as they inked a shared seal onto each other's back.

Later that year, elder Akane passed away peacefully after a particularly trying sickness, and Shukaku was reminded of just how mortal his happiness could be.

………

Sunshine washed against faded sky-blue paint, cerulean accents just barely standing out against the paint they'd once domineered over- faint patterns of seals, beautiful in their complexity, in their simplicity. The crashing of the waves was a never-ending lullaby, fathomless depths brought to an end- just one of many… here, where the sea met the land of a small isle. Where the sea birds called out in their cheerful manner, and the flowers ever bloomed.

It was a truly beautiful day. Curled up with a gently sobbing Okimi outside a house that had once been Akane's, he thought it shouldn't- a nice thunderstorm would have been more thematically appropriate. They weren't even that rare when it came to Uzushiogakure- the span of lightning, a crashing thunder…

"It's so pretty… the sunshine. She'd have loved it."

Shukaku chuckled softly, trying to imagine Akane enjoying anything instead of good-naturedly tormenting him and his sealing. "I think… she'd have tried to hit the sun with her chainst and tell it to stop being so bright."

Okimi laughed brightly, the melancholic smile on her face so at odds to the tears just moments before. "She totally would." A flicker of chakra pressed out against his, just a curl, and Shukaku responded in kind… his acrid chakra caused her to flinch, but as their respective henges dissolved beneath each other's sunshine, she still smiled. "I think she really liked you, even if you never said it." It wasn't a lie. Lying to him would have been next to impossible during the chakra transfer ninshu.

"She gave me something a few months ago, for you." She'd long suspected when she was going to die. When even the Uzumaki longevity started to fail, it wasn't hard to suspect the end was soon. "She said-" he paused, composing himself for a single second- "the brat will love them. Brat."

She whacked him lightly as a substitute for pushing him into the water- mostly because he already was in the water. The small, distant island would barely hold one of his paws, including the space the house was sitting on. "Weren't you brat number one? I was the angelic and lovable Okimi, remember?"

Shukaku rolled his eyes, ruffling her hair in return. She'd really grown to hate that, with how it broke the henge, but today she just leaned into the soft, sandy tough. "Really? Well, if you don't want it…"

"No! No, please?" She looked up at him with imploring eyes, and Shukaku couldn't help but laugh. She looked so much like she had when she'd been ten, always asking for something or another… the sand of his hand shifted in soft agitation as he slowly pulled a glassy stone box almost as tall as Okimi from within it. "What is that?"

"A box. Or a block of stone-" Okimi leveled him a look , and he relented, shattering the stone to sand and pulling out a similarly large scroll. "Her tanuki summons. She thinks you should have them."

Her eyes widened in shock as she leapt to her feet, throwing herself at him with a beaming smile, arms outstretched as she clung to him in her limpet-like embrace. "Thanks- thank you, I'm… I wish I could tell her how much this means… thanks, dad-"

Shukaku froze, chakra roiling in shock and confusion for a single, eternal moment before he forced himself to relax. "I… I think I like the sound of that."

………

The next time they spoke, Tora just smirked and told him how surprised she was it took so long.

………

Eventually Ayaka's son took over as clan head, allowing her to retire. A retirement into the position of elder, which well… wasn't really much of a retirement, if Shukaku's knowledge of just how many people had come specifically to bother Akane was indicative of the position's usual troubles. As he'd more or less suspected, less than a month later she threw her trident at one of the warriors, packed everything into a seal, and moved out to Akane's old island.

To most of the Uzumaki, that was essentially the end of it- they'd asked questions, she'd reacted in a predictably Uzumaki manner, and now only the people who actually needed their problems solved would go and pick on the poor old woman.

In Shukaku's case, however, the former clan head was convinced something was off about him- perhaps it was because he was pretending to be the boss tanuki, yet had been living full time in Uzushiogakure for years. Or maybe one of the many, many inconsistencies around the stories of his past and where he'd learned sealing from- lies only kept together because Akane would back everything he said with a serious nod and that glint in her eyes that said she was enjoying everyone else's suffering.

It was almost a game- Ayaka would try some increasingly ridiculous stunt in an attempt to get him to slip up, get frustrated, sulk, then repeat.

Okimi found it endlessly hilarious. Tora would always repeat how remarkably stupidly she was going about it- their sprint across fire country had been anything but subtle.

Still, as the years moved with the tide and seasons wheeled by, the attempts continued.

………

"Hey, hey- little Ren, can you tell me about mr. Shukaku? I'll give you a piece of candy-"

"That's remarkably desperate of you. He's only one, you know?"

Ayaka yelped in surprise, dropping the sweet she'd been holding and whirling around to face him. "How- kami! How'd you sneak up on me? You're like-" she spread her arms wide, face frozen in a thunderous expression- "super big! I should have noticed you."

Shukaku settled down atop the seaside waves, pointedly silent. "You were too busy harassing Okimi's one year old son for information he can't possibly give about me."

"Hey! You never know what could help! Just the other day I managed to wheedle out that your brother was an imperial traitor!" Kurama. The insinuation that he'd ever been part of the empire to turn traitor to begin with was… he had to bite back a smile. Tora had been proving disturbingly good at providing misleading information. "And- and combined with your sand, I've decided you're actually a Sabaku clan summon! On a long term infiltration mission to Uzushiogakure!"

Shukaku gave her a pointed look. "And Okimi?"

"No!" Ayaka looked furious at the very suggestion. "She's an Uzumaki! Therefore, she can't be a spy. The ritual would have revealed her true intentions had that been the case, but it didn't, so she just wanted to be an Uzumaki!"

"Ritual?"

Ayaka blanched and glanced around for a few seconds before, very unsubtly, turning tail and running away.

The sand to the side shifted slightly as Okimi climbed out of where she'd been hiding to grab the abandoned candy. "Ninshu. I'm fairly convinced it's some form of bastardized ninshu." She scoffed lightly, settling little Ren in her lap with a dopey smile. "Can't believe the nerve of that woman, going after Ren… he can barely even speak!"

"The Uzumaki have never been known for such petty things as logic ." Okimi snorted softly in agreement. "Ninshu, though…" he hadn't thought anything had remained of the practice besides what he and his siblings remembered.

Interesting. So very interesting…

………

The next time Ayaka cornered him- on the shattered and smoking island where he'd been practicing fuuinjutsu- he simply held out a fist to her in silent expectation.

Her face melted from confusion to anger, to exasperation and confusion back again. "So you conned Okimi into telling you about the ritual? You won't actually be able to perform it- legend goes, it's older than hand seals. It takes a very specific knowledge to use-"

"Ninshu."

The dominant expression on her face settled on confusion. "What's ninshu?" Shukaku just looked pointedly at his hand- and, carefully, she reached out her own-

A space undone-

Chakra rushed through her coils, burning with the Juubi's remnant impression, the ancient age of it all- Shukaku knew what she felt, just as much as he felt- resolve, to serve Uzushiogakure, joy for a son, sorrow for fallen elders, strength like fuuinjutsu written across her arm, into her soul, chakra-

She felt- age. Hundreds of years of quiet desert, interspersed by a slow, methodical inquisition into the nature of fuuinjustu- the nature of reality. Sealed silence, sorrow, burning cities, warring clans, red eyes spinning in overwhelming-

A memory of family, terrible devotion, sorrow. The weight of time.

Ayaka reeled back with a gasped sob, crumpling into the ocean surf as she just- breathed, short, sharp gulps hidden by the rhythmic crashing waves, white on sand, shore to sea. A long minute passed before she struggled to her feet, chakra flickering in dangerous agitation. "You- you're the Ichibi, aren't you?" Shukaku nodded softly, dispelling his henge. "What the- what was that? I expected the second half but… how can you feel eyes ."

"I'd rather not-"

"Right. Sorry, if that was too personal… I'm not supposed to talk about anything in the ritual to anyone- not even really supposed to tell people about the ritual in the first place. As far as other people ask, it's just a test of determination, got it?" She shuddered, clearly shaken from the chakra, the impressions she'd felt. "That was… I don't think I ever understood how lonely a long life could be until now."

Shukaku's expression grew a bit pinched. "As I said, I'd rather not talk about it."

"Fine. Fine… but you're the Ichibi. " Yes, obviously- "you have to tell me about your barrier seals- Akane knew, but she never wrote anything down! You must have some super cool…" That hadn't… exactly been what he'd expected, but the Uzumaki had always been a bit insane. Now, how to explain unified sealing theory to an Uzumaki to get the least number of future explosions…

………

Ayaka blew up her house not even two weeks later.

Mission failed.

………

When Okimi was forty, he told her that one day he'd leave back to wind country. He gave her a lot of reasons, some of which weren't even that bad. They both knew the truth though.

He couldn't watch another of his precious people die. Not yet.

………

When Okimi was just over sixty years old, sealmaster and matriarch of the Sunaarashi Uzumaki branch family- when Tora was eighty three and owed her long life almost entirely to the life-support network he'd carefully maintained over the years- they stood together one last time on the shores of Uzushiogakure, pastel bright buildings stark against an overcast sky.

It was a small gathering- Ayaka, Okimi, Tora, and a few odd tanuki summons whose first actions upon being called were to run over and give him fur care tips. Everyone in Uzushiogakure who knew him, together once more.

Bittersweet. As the waves lapped against his legs, sending smoothly henged fur adrift in floating patterns, he wondered if this was the last time he'd see the city so alive. One day, his memories told him, this beautiful place would be ash and nothing more than cold ruins.

He put such thoughts out of his mind, leaning down so he was at eye-level with the few people on the beach. "It's been a long journey, together… I'm proud of you, Okimi. You too, Tora."

"Your henge is so much better than the first time-" Tora squawked in indignation as the sand beneath her gave out, throwing her onto her back, but there was the undeniable glint of sorrow, of giddy determination that she could still withstand a bit of roughness like that. "Okay, okay. I'll miss you, and the way all the Uzumaki look at your fuuinjutsu like you're the son of the Sage." Shukaku very carefully didn't react to that one.

Okimi just pressed her head against his own, tears dripping down like so much salt, quiet memories and eternities spent together, mere moments in time- "I'll miss you, dad." It was unfair how that still ruined his emotional composure, even now. "Take care. Put the most ridiculous fuuinjutsu traps in your labyrinth. I swear, if I don't hear someone complaining the next glass shipment…"

"Yeah! Get those wind bastards!" Ayaka's cheer was contagious, and the next few minutes had the entire group clamoring over themselves to give him increasingly more inane ideas for fuuinjustu to plaster around wind country. Even the tanuki pitched in with an idea or two, but the younger of the now considerably larger duo was still obsessing about fur care.

"Alright." His voice rumbled over a sudden silence. "I'll be sure to torment them with your devious ideas. It's been a long journey together. Okimi… if you ever pass through wind country, don't be afraid to drop by."

She raised an incredulous eyebrow. "Into your nasty labyrinth of death where mom almost abandoned me as a kid? Don't mind if I don't ." Shukaku chuckled softly- brokenly. It was the last time either of them would see the other, and they knew it. "Ayaka has something to give… I… take it as a last memory of me, will you? We worked hard on it."

The elder held out her hand, unsealing a small scroll into her palm. "You'll love this- it's a chakra folding technique." Her smile grew positively devious. "You know, if only I knew of a giant chakra construct which could benefit from a way to compress their chakra to a much, much smaller size… alas, this nice technique's gonna go to waste-" a gust of wind blew it out of her hand and right to Shukaku. "Oh! Didn't see you there, sir giant chakra construct."

Cradling a gift more precious than anything he'd received since the days of the sage, for the last time standing aside what he might have, in a different world- one with a different future, called family… there was really only one thing appropriate to say. "Okimi. If nothing else- remember this." A pit of sorrow in his chest, regret and the solemnity of closure- "I will love you always ."

Okimi just stepped back, face bitter. Understanding. "Goodbye, Shukaku-" and he turned away from them, away from Uzushiogakure and her glittering barriers- back to the sea and sand and the long march of time.

To home.

To another journey.Chapter 11: They Who Judge Time

Summary:

"What drives you to learn senjutsu? What is your desire?"

"To kill a certain man." Shukaku hated how much he sounded like Sasuke in that moment. "And in doing so, save many more."

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

The sands of wind country were lonely, rolling as the dunes ever stood, transient to the likes of immortals- like waves, so similar as they moved over the years. Moments stretched long, pearls on a string of time- to eternity as he moved through the desert winds he watched the natural emptiness of the desert, and found himself at home.

It was almost natural- the way each of his steps felt the uncountable grains of sand, the strength of wind-scoured rock yet resolute against the harsh sun- to think of this place as home… Uzushiogakure had been beautiful, but the towering walls of his labyrinth and the orderly deep of his warren would always be his . The memories of this place- building it, repairing it, living in it for hundreds and hundreds of years… it never failed to be bitter, yet so sweet. Nostalgic, he supposed, for its own time.

Shukaku settled back into his labyrinth as though he'd never left; the routine of carefully plastering a thousand dangerous seals over every surface, the freedom to just… be. It was something he hadn't realized he'd missed until he spent two weeks straight working on minor alterations to a barrier seal. As much as he missed all he'd left behind in the eye of the sea, the sand yet called to him.

The years whispered in unending susurration, as the wind blew, and he slowly focused back onto his first goal- the goal that had carried him forward since Indra had first turned his eyes on his brother and bound him- eliminate Zetsu .

In that, he focused on a single thing. Fuuinjutsu . Between his own knowledge and the uzumaki script… they had revealed some of the deepest mysteries of the sealing arts to him. To them, the mere fact that they could was enough- to Shukaku, he needed to understand why .

Fitting the Uzumaki components into a unified theory would be a pain… but for the first time, finally , after so many years he had all the pieces he needed. It would have to be enough.

………

The last character of an seal to span the entire floor of his warren, crawling up his walls and swirling in intricate scripting across the roof twisted into existence, the entire creation shifting into alignment with itself and everything else-

Elsewhere, space decided as chakra rushed through the seal in furious torrents, brilliant light searing through the lines of the seal and raced through its immense pathways, was right here . There superimposed itself over a space fifty feet up and exactly centered on the middle of his warren, and the blank air decided it wasn't.

Space tore open with the deep chime of shattered- metal-not-metal, existence itself- and a seam in existence opened to the sky in the land of birds. Shukaku laughed in victory as he watched the chakra swirl through the seal in mesmerizing patterns, a sea of gentle light swirling all around him- it had taken him years to make this seal, but to prove a theory…

He cut off the chakra flow, slumping to the floor in sudden exhaustion, exultant- he'd been right . The Uzumaki might have been able to throw open a rift in barely a few characters and swirling lines, but he'd taken the very basics of sealwork and thrown and built a space-time seal. It was perfect.

The exhaustion stole over him, and he dreamed of memories, future, and seals in infinite perfection. He dreamed of possibility.

With the Uzumaki providing the end result, building the bridge between simple characters and esoteric concepts wasn't hard. What was , though, was consolidating them from their immense size to the few characters used in Uzumaki space-time seals. The sheer amount of complicated, subtle interactions that held the characters together was… frustrating- a thousand blanks in the complicated web of a unified sealing theory.

The years passed quickly as he worked on fuuinjutsu and a thousand other projects- it was all too easy to be sucked back into the unending effort, slowly picking apart the thousand possibilities in each symbol. To quietly isolate what did what, to understand.

He took the uzumaki script, tore it apart and rebuilt it again- lesser, to an extent, its seals sprawling massive over his warren's walls so unlike the concise Uzumaki characters- but, in its own way consistent. Space-time seals were barriers were explosive elemental tags- his seals were seals. Everything built off itself, together-

To himself, he named it his own- tanuki script.

Kurama would be so mad if he ever found he'd named the fundamental laws of fuuinjutsu after himself.

………

The defenses for his labyrinth reflected his progress with tanuki script. First a few basic space-time seals, incorporated into the mix of barriers and explosive tags. Spatial distortions only added to the difficulty in traversing the maze.

By this point, he had to admit to himself that the maze was less an exploitation of human psychology he'd hoped, and more just an attempt to see exactly how much he could ruin the day of anyone who wandered inside.

Seals that interacted with the soul were the most complicated- if the way the Uzumaki worked with them was strange, then the logical jumps needed to work them into tanuki script were… so much worse. They were simply odd - the rules were the same, but twisted- different in a way that spoke to something so incomprehensibly other , separate.

The seals were unique in a thousand different ways- they always interacted through countless intermediaries and odd laws, through the chakra networks, piggybacking off the chakra unconsciously released and absorbed- it was, frankly, frustrating . Space-time seals were easy in comparison, but there were secrets hidden in the impossible, and he wanted those.

A hundred years later began the painstaking process of tearing down the entire structure and replacing it with a seal- and, if he made the walls just a bit higher, and the cliffs a small bit sheerer, then nobody needed to know. It was was his greatest work yet- twenty years of effort simplifying a truly immense matrix into something he was satisfied with-

It was the first component in his masterwork.

………

To the citizens of wind country, the wanderings of the Ichibi were bizarre and unknowable- an implacable entity that walked where it would, in unpredictable patterns across the vast deserts. Sometimes, to them, he would appear as a specter in the distance- a portent of doom that came and left as it willed, leaving only immense footprints in his wake.

To Shukaku, there was a pattern there- written deep into the bedrock of wind country, where the far edges of his control ground the rock to dust and patiently imbued it with chakra. To where the lines scrawled out deep with his most secure sanctum sat, waiting in all their modular complexity to be etched into the bones of the earth.

The Ichibi wandered.

Ootsutsuki Shukaku wrote a seal the size of wind country.

………

Two hundred and twenty-odd years after he'd left from Uzushiogakure, Shukaku looked over his calculations, glanced over to the remaining schematics for the part of his masterwork not yet built, then glanced back at the calculations that stubbornly refused to change. The numbers just sat there- smugly - he'd done the math three times over, and the final value was still its eminently punchable self.

He might have made a… small… mistake in designing a seal the size of wind country.

He couldn't power it.

That wasn't a problem he'd ever had to deal with before- bijuu sized reserves were surprisingly useful when it came to powering some of the more complicated, esoteric seals, and chakra storage seals worked on all the rest. This seal, however- he could store all his chakra for a hundred years, and still not activate it for more than a small time. No matter how he redesigned the functional components to the network- no matter how efficient- the seal was simply too large for even a bijuu.

Well. He knew exactly what to do in this case-

First- sulk. That was the one and only step when it came to such an embarrassing reason for a seal to fail. He could understand making an error on the seal. He could even understand accidentally blowing up all of wind country. What he hated was simply forgetting that… chakra was a thing that seals needed. It was the height of embarrassment.

Perhaps he had been too focused on his sealing- again . Sighing in barely concealed frustration, a flex of his chakra tore the intricate diagrams off the wall, a hit from his tail shattering the stone for good measure. It'd felt like such a good idea, at the time… he loped off into the darkness of his warren, reaching out with his sand to pull free a scroll he hadn't looked at for hundreds of years. One of his few irreplaceable possessions.

Learning that chakra folding technique would be a good way to take his mind off things. Remembering how to relax was so much work …

………

A rasenshuriken sputtered and died in his palm, exploding outwards with a screeching roar of wind and enough force to tear his arm off at the elbow. A sharp hiss of pain sliced through the air in its wake as he crashed to the ground, carefully cradling the stump as he pulled at the desert sand to augment his natural regeneration.

He supposed he just didn't understand the technique. How Naruto of all people had managed to do it in mere months when he- with, admittedly, several hundred year-long breaks- hadn't managed it for centuries was beyond him. Something about-

He froze, a harsh grin etching itself across his face as a few separate thoughts connected, and an idea he'd abandoned as fantasy suddenly felt a lot more feasible. It was perfect -

Well, except for how he had absolutely no idea how senjustu worked. Other than that… wind release: amenomihashira had a nice ring to it, he thought. Hopefully his enemies would agree.

Now, to find a geezer…

………

As Shukaku finally stumbled to a halt beneath one of the immense mushrooms of Mount Myoboku, he finally appreciated what his memories had said of the place being hard to find . Hidden in mountain country, past implausibly high peaks, winding caverns that only a human of exceptional contortionism would have been able to fit through- snowy ravines and, ultimately, a sea of rocky spikes, hard to find was a misnomer.

"Hey!" He glanced up from where he'd finally gotten a place to rest, glaring at the small toad who'd yelled at him from a different mushroom. "Yeah, you- weird sand tanuki! This is toad country, bastard! You're not gonna get nothing from us!" As though he could stop him. For a moment Shukaku's glare flickered to offense- ah, right . He was small right now.

Being small was strange. He could barely remember how trepidatious he'd been of growing up, so long ago- but, while being small was certainly nice for his dexterity, everything was just so big . It was disorienting-

"Yeah, yeah- don't just sit there. Scram, tanuki!" The toad hopped from foot to foot, excitedly glaring at him. "You'll find me a very tough guard to get through, you know-"

"I'd like to speak to Gammamaru, please." The impossible depth of his voice immediately undid any intimidating affect the guard-toad's bravado might have had. On an observer, because Shukaku was too tired to be intimidated by someone he could crush with his pinky finger.

"Uh… I'll take you to Fukasaku, but if you try to play a prank, or steal something, or set the forest on fire- I'll know! And I'll beat you up! We've had enough of that with the…" he flinched, then hopped deeper into the forest. "C'mon you're gonna be late if you don't hurry up. I don't guide slowpokes!"

Sighing in exasperation Shukaku leapt after him, chakra-empowered leap shattering the ground beneath him as he raced to catch up. Being small came with some disadvantages, and the amount of random chakra exercises that were suddenly much more useful was startlingly large. It was almost as if most of the movement techniques he'd known from his past life were designed for humans .

"-and then Taika- he's cute, you'll like him- got all mad! He went and burnt down one of the trees, and Shima stomped him! He's so small- you should have seen him- little tiny fox, struggling to get out from underneath Shima ."

Shukaku blinked. "I thought all the foxes died in Ku- the Kyuubi's ambush?"

"Nope! The ones that were out and around came to us for sanctuary, so we have these little cute kits…" the guard trailed off, looking distinctly mortified- "is what I'd say, if we had foxes here. Because we don't. Have foxes, that is. They don't live here. Because they all died-"

"I get it."

The toad chuckled weakly, glancing around in sheepish wariness as they bounded into the village proper. "Well, we're here- it's that big building across the lake. Gamamaru's in there, but Fukasaku's not gonna let you do nothing to him! Why are you trying to see him, anyways?"

"He knew my father."

The toad-guard leaned in, looking interested. "Really?"

"Yeah. He was a toad summoner." More or less.

The toad, on the other hand, blinked in perplexed confusion. "But… how can a tanuki be a toad summoner?" Nevermind- Shukaku decided he was not going to be explaining tailed beast lore to a random toad. If he had questions, then he'd find him later. "Hey- come back-" or preferably, never . He jumped across the lake in a single leap, landing neatly in the vast entrance to the Great Toad Sage's domain.

His first thought was that a young Fukasaku's goatee was incredibly suave. His second thought was entirely focused on the pain such a small stick could deliver as it crashed down on his head. " Knock next time, kid! Youngsters, no respect…"

Shukaku rolled his eyes. "I'm older than you ."

"...oh." A sheepish Fukasaku was almost odder than how handsome he looked right now. "Well, then, before I take you to the sage, I'll have to know a little bit about-"

A third voice echoed from deeper in the building. "Let him in, Fukasaku. Hm… I wasn't expecting this, but… yes, I can see…" Gamamaru's voice dropped off to muttered musings as they came to a halt beneath his pool. "You're the odd one, yes… I remember this. Ruining all my perfectly good prophecies. Little Hagoromo adored you." He paused for a long moment. "Why are you here, again? I don't quite remember."

"He didn't even tell you yet, geezer." Fukasaku leaned in close to Shukaku, whispering into his ear- "I think he's getting senile-"

"I heard that, kid-"

"-so cut him some slack, eh?"

Shukaku nodded quickly, stepping forward to the base of the pool. "I'm here to learn senjutsu."

Gamamaru inclined his head, silent for a long moment before turning his head to look at Shukaku with- eyes that felt deeper than the universe, a piercing gaze that pricked at the edge of his mind. "Hm. Yes… I can see how you would take that path. And why- can't forget the motive… your fuuinjutsu rivals those old fools who dammed a dragon vein and made the gelel… I trust you'll use senjutsu for less… stupid… pursuits."

"Uh… okay?" Hopefully the seal he'd been making wouldn't lead to something so thoroughly useless. He wasn't quite sure what damming a dragon vein meant, but it was probably bad.

"Right!" Fukasaku hit his stick on the floor, shattering the awkward silence. "Geezer, I'll take this one to the training spikes and-"

"No." Achingly slowly, the ancient toad pushed himself out of his pool to the crash of cascading water and Fukasaku's shocked silence. "Go and bother your girlfriend-" Fukasaku spluttered something incoherent about how it wasn't like that at all - "and relax. I'll take care of Shukaku's training. We have… much in common."

………

Gamamaru walked beside him with a particularly unhurried gait- slow, but controlled, each movement precise, but not so much as to be mechanical. It was almost artistic, the way he neatly bent around every obstacle without once looking unduly strained. "Senjutsu… you more than match the requirements, but you are a… unique existence. Humans who fail to balance internal and external energies turn to stone. Or frogs, then stone, as it is at Mount Myoboku. You… well, you wouldn't turn to stone." They stopped at the edge of the toad's domain, where the paradisiacal jungle faded to a forest of stone spikes. "You'd explode ."

Shukaku restrained a wince. "That sounds… unpleasant."

"Hm… indeed. I imagine it would be a rather spectacular- painful- fireworks show." They continued onwards, Shukaku barely managing to keep from impaling himself through excessive use of sand platforms, Gamamaru with impossible grace- he just continued walking over the spikes. "A word of caution; senjutsu is of nature, in nature. As a bijuu, you are unique in both your connection to nature and the malleability of your form. Do not use senjutsu in anything but your true state. Natural will attack unnatural…"

"-and I'd explode."

Gamamaru chuckled softly. "You're a fast learner, Shukaku. Hagoromo always praised that part of you… a shame, how those kids turned out. Asura was so kind, when I first saw him…" Shukaku gritted his teeth, but said nothing. He had that particular regret all too often without someone else nagging him about it. "You're too large for these spikes… we'll go to the surrounding mountains. Plus, if you do end up exploding, then you won't take out Mount Myoboku with you." They trekked onwards, to a silent and snow-crushed land.

So began his training in senjutsu, with much the same energy as the rest of his experience- fascinating, but so, so frustrating .

………

If Fukasaku's stick hurt, the large stone pillar Gamamaru had picked up somewhere was so much worse. It whistled through the air to slam against him any time his chakra even so much as hinted it was going out of balance. "Focus, Shukaku. You've mastered being still- now, master being centered in spirit."

"I'm trying -" the pillar slammed down on his back again, cutting off his sentence in a pained wheeze. That time had just been unneeded- he hadn't even been attempting to use natural energy then! "It's just… slow."

"Learning the sage arts is a lifelong pursuit. It's why we geezers are so good at it." Gamamaru hopped neatly over the mountain he was balancing on, alighting perfectly on the peak of the next one over. "You can feel the eddies of natural chakra- observe how in stillness I gather natural chakra, and in movement I release it."

He'd felt that the first time he even sensed natural chakra- the way it twisted in eddies around the Great Toad Sage, perfectly balancing itself in the stillness between breaths. It was awe-inspiring, how smoothly the elder toad used senjutsu. "Your chakra is… still." It was- it was as still and calm as natural chakra, even when he wasn't actively using senjutsu. "The natural chakra just… slips in. I don't understand how you manage that."

"Ah… I see your problem." The pillar crashed down his back, then neatly continued onto an extra motion, pushing him off the peak. "Walk with me for a bit- something troubles you. You must understand yourself before you understand all of nature." He leapt off his peak, and Shukaku followed him as they bounded down to the winding stream that carved the depths of the valley so far below them. "What drives you to learn senjutsu? What is your desire ?"

"To kill a certain man." Shukaku hated how much he sounded like Sasuke in that moment. "And in doing so, save many more."

Gamamaru hummed softly in consideration. "I see. You worry about the future, and how your actions might have changed it. If anything you do will be enough."

Shukaku froze, slowly turning to the elder toad with barely constrained- emotion, just ecstatic joy, fear- "how did you know that?" It wasn't really a question, as much as it was a demand .

The elder toad sighed, silent for a long minute as they bounded quickly through the mountains, following the stream until it cascaded into a small valley of alpine trees and an austere blanket of purest snow. "I found this place, several hundred years ago. It was a retreat, for me- soon, one day, it will be the foxs' domain. They deserve some quiet after so much of humanity's hatred. Rather like your brother, eh?"

" How ? How did you know?"

Gamamaru's exhaustion - the sheer weight of his age, was for a single moment all too apparent. "You are not the only being on this planet gifted with foresight. Though ours are different, I understand your position rather uniquely."

"So you know of my knowledge because you saw it in the future?"

"Not quite." They leapt down the final ledge to the valley below, pristine snow crunching under their weight. "I knew the moment your arrival shifted a great many things. Hm… how to make sense of this… ah! Let me tell you of the child of prophecy." His gaze, so piercing- "Uzumaki Nagato. Uzumaki Naruto. I know a great deal more than I might let on… the many futures press deeply on an old toad's mind, and sometimes even reality feels like a dream."

Shukaku followed him carefully through the forest, shifting the sand of his form so as not to destroy any of the trees. Eventually, they stopped at a small, barren hill in the center of the deep alpine domain. "If you knew the future-"

"I know a great deal about the trials of that troublesome blonde. But to understand my reasoning, you must understand- fate is not fixed. Prophecy is a tool- a word of woe is a desperate plea to change this . A prophecy of some indeterminate good is a lever on fate- to push it onto a path to great good."

Shukaku sat for a moment, silent. "I don't… it makes sense, but how does that relate-"

"To you? You find yourself separate from others because of this knowledge you have- a slight difference to yourself that nobody else can possibly relate to." Gamamaru rested a flipper on his back, the motion gentle- peaceful, in the snowed-in field. "Remember the last words of your father." I will always love you . "He spoke of a blond haired, blue-eyed child. Consider why I told him that prophecy."

"...to make sure, in the end, that when it came down to the final confrontation with Kaguya, my siblings had that slight nudge to listen to Naruto. They always took father's words seriously." A few words, alone- and the path of fate was twisted between victory or defeat.

"You understand. We cannot solve everything ." The conviction in that was so powerful it suffsed the air around him, rebounding off the natural chakra of the world as truth, as a fundamental law. "For those who judge time, we must choose our moments carefully. Do not be discouraged when you can't explain-" why he stayed with Asura, even after everything. Why he worked so hard on fuuinjutsu- "everything to even those closest to you. Just know that when your moment comes, you've done your part to keep the world living. Do not waste your foresight, Ootsutsuki Shukaku." The old toad's hand ruffled the sand atop his head- "but, on the other hand… I believe in you. You will do great things one day, have done great things- never forget your conviction."

Shukaku nodded, something settling- he would be ready.

………

Two months later Shukaku felt- ecstatic joy- himself, beaming pride- Gamamaru, pleased shock- himself. A myriad of feelings , sensations- so many things he just hadn't noticed before as natural chakra settled perfectly into his own, suffusing his form with the faint sensation of- trees, stone, snow- sky and the breadth of all things.

He opened eyes that gleamed, pure mirrors of gold onto a mountain of snow, stone and vibrant life he'd never even suspected of hiding on the desolate peaks. He opened his eyes as the black markings along his body shivered, and bled to a brilliant gold.

He opened his eyes a sage.

………

Gamamaru's vast stone room wasn't so intimidating, when one could feel natural chakra. It was a cheerily bright place- so very alive , and he couldn't help but bask in it- a good last memory before he left the toad's domain. "One last thing, Shukaku… before you leave- a gift." Gamamaru reached into the space behind his pool, carefully pulling one of the scrolls out of its stone casing and gently rolling it open. "I'm sure you've had… poor experiences with techniques that interact with your soul?"

Shukaku nodded in wry amusement. "The Yamanaka who tried had her brain turned to soup."

Gamamaru smiled softly. "So you realize how attempting to tie you to a soul contract would be… very bad. Nevertheless, I wanted to give you the opportunity to sign the toad's summoning scroll- a formality… in ink, of course. You are a sage of Mount Myoboku, and it is your right to sign the scroll." A small pause, as Shukaku read the two names on the scroll- "and… I thought you'd appreciate it for more… personal reasons."

Written in blood, five fingerprints beneath-

Ootsutsuki Hagoromo.

Ootsutsuki Asura .

Shukaku stared at the scroll in silence for a long moment before pulling on the smallest bit of his sand and earth-natured chakra, grinding it into a fine powder. His name, he wrote in sand, for memory, and below, in place of a bloody handprint, he signed a symbol- sun and moon. A third name, below the others- Ootsutsuki Shukaku. "Thank… thank you for this. For training me in senjutsu, and offering your advice."

"I'm not known as the Great Toad Sage for nothing, kid! It'll be nice to see you again, one day…" he muttered something, below his breath, then waved to the door as the scroll disappeared in a puff of smoke. "You have much to do… better get going, young Ootsutsuki…"

………

Home once again- Shukaku stood in the silence of a desert at night, feeling the tranquil natural chakra of the sands and skies as he gathered the different chakra-types together. Pure chakra, burning blue. Golden natural chakra, rushing slowly, still and turbulent within him. Wind chakra, piercing and sharp, whistling, screaming so powerfully-

It was as a step forward- the moment where something impossible became possible . He'd come back with his knowledge of senjutsu to rewrite his grand seal into the very nature of the desert, powering it with the natural energy of the world. This- this was just the first step. Another step forward.

Piercing white light shone, daytime compressed into a single glowing sphere screeching as it formed out of nothing. Three chakra types combined, the very air around him humming with the strength of the energy cusped in the palm of his ginormous hand. How it moved, so beautifully deadly through the air- how it bloomed, expanding into a furious sphere of roaring winds a hundred feet across. He intoned in the deep of his voice, as the technique screamed - "wind release : rasenshuriken! "Chapter 12: Binding

Summary:

He recognized that feeling- had felt it once before, forever ago- he reached out to the shared mindscape, and in the same moment felt the sharp bindings on his chakra restrain him.

A seal.

They'd sealed him.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

His grand seal was unique in a lot of ways. Unlike most seals it wasn't powered by a stored reservoir of chakra- rather, it was part of the natural flow of chakra through the desert. It was based on senjutsu, and between the sensitivity of nature chakra, the detailed soul-seal written into the basic frame of its form, and the sheer detail its size allowed, it was unparalleled at what it did.

Nothing and no one could hide from the eyes of his seal; all of wind country was revealed to him. Deep beneath his warren, in a sealed hall illuminated by a vast glowing spiral etched into the roof, a mile-wide pit of sant formed the core of the seal- sand ever shifting into figures and symbols as Shukaku polished and debugged the seal over a lonely hundred years.

When it was finished, every shinobi in wind country was displayed in that pool of sand as it contorted into an immense map of the ground above the seal. Theoretically, it was his best weapon against Hashirama's crusade against the tailed beasts- the moment he entered the desert, he'd know. A hundred years was a long time to plan.

Meanwhile, there were always seals to work on, and details to smooth out. If this was to work… it would have to go perfectly.

………

Things did not go perfectly. In fact, they went wrong before he even had the chance to think of why they went wrong.

It'd been over a thousand years. He deserved some slack for not remembering the exact timeline.

It started quickly, and only escalated from there. He'd been on a fairly routine jaunt outside of his labyrinth when the small crowd of shinobi approached him- weak chakra users, but threats nonetheless. It wasn't an altogether odd occurance- most would simply run at his presence, but there were always the odd groups that convinced themselves of the fame they'd get from killing a bijuu. Even some of the shinobi from almost a thousand years ago had been stronger than these particular fools.

The best laid plans of mice and men and idiotic tanuki bijuu were ever wont to go awry, though- it should have been simple. Kill the interlopers, adjust the strange glitch that kept showing implausibly powerful shinobi around the wind temple. Unfortunately, the seal didn't account for weak shinobi who very rapidly became strong .

For example, a user of the eight gates.

That simple plan was annihilated the moment two shinobi punched fingers through their hearts, and exploded into a furious scarlet conflagration of chakra. The waves of sand he'd sent toward them were batted aside in a single powerful blow- identical between the two of them- that blew the desert apart before them as they rocketed toward him-

The eighth gate, for a few minutes, let a human fistfight with a bijuu. Facing two , Shukaku realized the truth of that statement- one moment they were almost a thousand feet away from them, the next he was being punted into the sand, almost too fast to respond. Just as the second volley of blows plummeted toward him he grasped the sand around him, twisting it inwards on itself and lighting a series of garnet red barriers that cooked the sand beneath them to glass in their power.

The first shinobi's fist collided with the barrier, and was crushed to a pulp in the same moment the first three layers shattered- his very body had begun to smoke, blood boiling at the edge of the wound. The second one landed a kick, breaking through the rest before the sheer momentum of his movement crashed him into Shukaku's head and threw them both back a hundred feet.

Tendrils of sand leapt out at the momentarily stunned taijutsu master, holding him for the barest fraction of a second as the sand painted itself over his skin in elegant patterns. The taijutsu master kicked away from him, cratering the desert in his wake, and Shukaku waited for a moment longer for him to reach the apex of his leap. "Gravity binding: seal!" Brilliant lines erupted into color across his body as he just- fell, slamming into the ground hard enough to leave a crater around his crushed, mutilated remains.

Shukaku glanced up as he charged a bijuudama, resolute to end this- he was in the desert, and a large explosion never hurt empty dunes. Furious eyes locked on the rest of the interlopers, standing in a circle around him, chakra pulsing in furiously quick patterns-

He swallowed the bijuudama, and opened his mouth to spit it at the shinobi who dared-

The first of the gate-users, body literally burning to ash before his eyes, uppercut him with enough force to shatter mountains, and the bijuudama speared harmlessly into the noonday sky-

He felt something grab onto him- like infinite hooks leeching at his chakra, and then there was a brilliant light, vicious pain, and darkness .

………

Drip .

A faint sound, pricking at the back of his mind in some long-forgotten memory of technicolor scenes, memory, matter, time… He shifted, wearily tucking his head into the crook of his elbow. Just a few more minutes… he didn't need to turn in that paper today, right? Right…

Drip.

No… Asura, he really hoped Asura hadn't gotten into his storage seals again. The amount of stuff that went missing… the amount of stuff they'd needed to reorganize… Indra had been so mad , seeing his best robe crumpled up into a ball and sealed away…

Drip-

He'd thought he'd sealed up the cave well enough… sure, the ocean literally washed into the cavity at high tide, but that wasn't a reason as to why he couldn't at least prevent that annoying leak from keeping him awake.

Drip.

Wearily, he opened his eyes, blinking at the darkness around him and the quicksand shifting- sticky- beneath him. What was the last thing he'd been doing, again? He'd been patching up the house with Okimi… no, he'd been working on his labyrinth, and warren- the seal. He'd been working on the seal, but the calculations…

No, sage mode had fixed that. He shook his head, trying to clear the last of the muddying fog that had stuck itself to his memories. He'd been fighting… yes, fighting two thoroughly annoying taijutsu masters who'd blitzed him fast enough to avoid most of his arsenal. Then…

Pain. Light and pain, and tearing hooks- he bounded upright in an instant, even as the floor beneath him pulled beguilingly at his legs, binding him. He recognized that feeling- had felt it once before, forever ago- he reached out to the shared mindscape, and in the same moment felt the sharp bindings on his chakra restrain him.

A seal.

They'd sealed him. Roaring in frustration, he pulled himself out from the binding quicksand and trudged to the boundaries of his tight constraints, a massive sluice gate welded to the edges of stone with shimmering lines of fuuinjutsu. No matter- he was a master of fuuinjutsu- escaping should be simple enough.

It wasn't.

It didn't take him more than a quick glance to analyze the seal- it was terrible , so very weak- but also next to impossible for him to interact with from the inside. It prevented him from doing… almost anything. Sage mode was beyond him, bound as he was into a cramped seal- and his fuuinjuutsu was next to useless within the mindscape. No matter how complicated a seal he drew, he was trapped in a dream- his true form just a mass of chakra flimsily held behind a faulty seal.

Roaring in fury, he pounded against the impermeable stone, against the metal grate which dented- ever so very slightly- at the immense force of his rage. "Let me out! Free me from this- prison, human! " It had to be a human he was sealed in. Nothing else would be able to withstand the force of the chakra he'd focused on destroying the seal. There should have been some degradation-

There was no response.

The seal felt timeless- claustrophobic, even though he had no small amount of space to move around, and terribly uncomfortable as the quicksand pulled down at him every time he stopped moving. Of everything, though, the worst was how boring it was. Even alone in his labyrinth there was always something to do, the option to leave, or even the shared mindscape to talk to Kokuo or the others. Trapped in the seal- the days felt empty.

As the days passed in never-ending silence, he studied the fuuinjutsu that bound him. It was… uninspired- simple, but effective, leaning heavily leaning on some- obviously stolen, by how crudely it was soldered together with the space-time components- Uzumaki seals that affected the soul. Circles within circles- his soul bound within and without, his chakra swirling in the seal on his hands of all places- it was… odd. Noneucledian, and probably mostly unintentional…

Nevertheless, five days- or a week… it was somewhat hard to tell- he found the first major weakness in the seal. With his consciousness inside the seal and his soul tangled both inside and out, it was all too easy to hijack his jinchuuriki's senses.

First- sight. As far as he could tell, they were in a sprawling temple complex near the border between earth and fang country, somewhat close to the daimyo's palace. For the most part the actions of his jinchuuriki were austere- he would wake up in the morning, meditate for several hours, eat a small meal, converse with the other monks, eat another small meal, then meditate and fall asleep. Other than a few of the monks, people distanced themselves- even the unsubtle shinobi who followed his every move never seemed comfortable to be in the same room as him.

Good for them. Maybe they'd survive when he got out of this- ignominy.

Next, oddly enough, was tactile sensation- it came unconsciously as the monk went through his daily routine, and had it not been for his human past he might have dismissed it as just another piece in the seal's torture. Subtly, too- a brush of fingers off a warm cup in the morning. The cool bite of the desert air at night.

Taste was next, and if there was anything bearable about being sealed, it was the ability to taste food again. Usushiogakure had been positively tortuous at times, able to smell everything but knowing that attempting to eat was pointless. It was an almost odd sensation, after more than a thousand years of not having to eat- the textures, flavors of even the simplest foods were exquisite.

Hearing was last- and in that he learnt the most of anything.

His jinchuuriki's name was Bunpuku. He was a monk in the wind temple.

He'd chosen his fate.

In sudden fury against the person who'd chosen to ruin his life- not because he'd gone on a rampage, not because Hashirama had handed him out like candy, but just because - he poured the full force of his willpower against the seal, demanding his chakra to move- just a little. The walls of the seal shook under the force of his rage before a faint blue chakra moved through the seal, reinforcing it.

Shukaku knew seals. He knew exactly what was happening as Bunpuku's chakra network reinforced the damaged seal, returning it to its pristine state. He knew that even as everything in the mindscape of his prison was fake , that little bit of chakra- that was actually there.

Reaching out, he clasped the chakra in his hand and pulled .

Bunpuku appeared on the other side of the gate, head clutched in his hand. "What have you done, beast?"

"I've disrupted your fuuinjutsu." Not all that much, but seeing the man sweat at the imagined failure of his seal was cathartic. "Release me."

"Never." Damn it. His sand ground against itself in frustration at the firm denial- he absolutely did not want to deal with being sealed into Gaara- or really, being sealed for the next hundred years at all. He had things he'd planned, and this was getting in the way of everything. "I will not surrender to you, beast. My sacrifice is noble." Ah- that was something. Even to him and his limited human interaction, that sounded as though he was trying to convince himself.

A grin he didn't truly feel spread across his face- giddy, soft - something that wouldn't have looked out of place on Chomei. "You would think that… but, on the time scales of immortals, what are you but a nuisance? Your sacrifice is ultimately meaningless. Harmful even! You have no idea what you're messing with, human."

"I've heard enough of this." The fuuinjutsu's chains lashed out from the seal, wicked hooks binding into the essence of his being and dragging him, pulling- as the quicksand shifted over his form, he glared at Bunpuku one last time. "Be silent, beast."

The faint echoes of the chakra he'd grabbed hummed softly in his hand- a piece of something he wasn't supposed to have, a connection . He laughed, and it was a harsh, angry thing- " no. "

………

Shukaku chuckled softly as an aggrieved Bunpuku appeared beyond the gate again . "Maybe your mediation fails you? Perhaps you've forgotten that in seeking out what lies within you, then you only find me ."

"Shut up . I don't have the time to deal with you right now, monster." He held out a hand, and the bindings pulsed, pushing him down. "In here, others are safe from you. I will not repeat my reasoning again- the other monks already believe me unstable.

"Perhaps you are?" The bite of hooks against his being, pulling him deeper to circles within circles, terrible fuuinjutsu grating against his very being- it was painful . There had been few humans he truly hated, but this- this priest who was supposed to be kind- he despised him. He pulled at where he could sense his chakra, laughing in his deep rumble as the chains shivered beneath its corrosive force. "You never know- the most despicable of people hide their demons away. You love your control-"

Bunpuku turned his back on him, silently walking away as the chains struggled to drag him beneath the quicksand- but there was anger there.

Perfect.

His sealed chakra roiled against the agitation, seething with the Juubi's malicious taint against the anger resplendent against him. All he needed was just a little bit more…

………

Shukaku was a constant presence- unsleeping, always waiting- every time he'd meditate he'd pull him down into the seal, responding to his sanctimonious vitriol with vitriol of his own. Every day, he could see the faint frustration on his face grow more pronounced, evident in the faint bags beneath his eyes, the quiet lines of frustration on his brow.

Every day, as the chains dragged him to drown in endless morasses of quicksand, he grasped more and more of Bunpuku's chakra to himself, and the connection was only stronger. Just over a year into his incarceration, he managed to poke into his mind as he was having a conversation with one of the elderly monks, discussing the teachings of a pilgrim from the fire temple.

For a moment he waited, listening carefully to the elderly monk's words- he wouldn't waste this moment. He was so close to freedom. "...and, Bunpuku, as we are given kindness by others, we then give unto others our kindness. Yet, if we are only given hate, then what are we to give in return but love?"

He chuckled, a long, drawn out sound in the space between their minds that caused Bunpuku to flinch softly. "You've done a really good job giving me love , Bunpuku. You make a truly terrible monk-"

"I don't! " He froze as the elder looked at him quizzically, then in restrained fear .

" How it hurts, little child, to see them hate you- does it not? To see them fear you?" He pressed his chakra against the grate, feeling it shiver. "They hate you, they hate me - and yet I'm still here, aren't I? Not quite so out of mind, only ever out of sight- but they can see you, and for all your sacrifice they shun you." Not a word of that hadn't been true.

The seal shuddered for a moment against some unnamable emotion of Bunpuku's, before a sea of suffusing blue chakra poured through the cracks in the stone, sealing it ever tight. "I don't have to listen to you, demon-" the two shinobi who'd been following him forever leapt down, Kunai to his back and throat, and he startled just long enough for Shukaku to grab another chunk of the man's chakra.

"Monk. That's enough. You will return to your rooms at once." The firm grip they kept on his arms were obvious in their threat- he didn't have another option.

Shukaku impressed the sensation of red eyes swirling , terrible control onto Bunpuku, and he shivered beneath the weight of the memory. "It's terrible, isn't it- being trapped?" Bunpuku shook his head in rapid denial, a faint shiver running down his body at Shukaku's taunts.

The elderly priest recovered his composure as the two shinobi dragged his student out the door. "Ah… Bunpuku, remember my teachings. I'll be here tomorrow if you need me." In the depths of his seal, carefully guarded against Bunpuku's thoughts, Shukaku smiled softly at the small kindness.

He needed to cultivate Bunpuku's hate- he'd never know his thoughts on that small moment, just one in a sea of fear- but there was something satisfying in knowing that his father hadn't been wrong about humanity.

The two shinobi threw Bunpuku into his austere room, slamming the door shut behind them as they took their places in the rafters. For a long moment there was silence as Bunpuku settled into a meditative pose almost automatically, and by the time he remembered exactly what that entailed he was already standing just outside Shukaku's seal. "You talked to me-"

"Of course I did. I'm sure after our many, many enlightening conversations in the depths of this very seal, you didn't think that I was some sort of some dumb beast?"

"I hate you." The words were vitriolic, but said by Bunpuku they carried an absolute surety behind them- as though he was completely at peace with the fact. It might have well been a law of the universe. "You have ruined a great many things, beast."

His laugh was sharp- bitter. They sought to control- to bind him, then sought to justify themselves. How awful. "I've never ruined anything. The last time I blew up a city was almost a thousand years ago- humans kill each other a thousand times faster than I ever have." A lie. He knew he'd been a major cause of death in Indra and Asura's war- a single bijuudama could destroy a city, and they were all too easy to make.

"You've defiled a great portion of wind country, Ichibi. With you removed, the labyrinth will finally be free from your demonic taint."

Shukaku just… stared at him for a long moment, trying- desperately trying not to roar with laughter. Demonic taint ? That was… probably one of the stupidest things he'd ever heard, and he'd been blessed with Kurama for a brother. "Well, then. I'm afraid your sacrifice has been for nothing. My home's 'taint' will remain until the rocks are worn down to sand and memory. You've elected yourself to be hated quite easily, for nothing at all-"

The chains lashed out from the seal, digging into his self and dragging it down- but he only smiled as he felt Bunpuku's emotions against the mass of his chakra.

Close.

Closer .

………

Bunpuku strode uneasily through the early morning chill, chakra uneasy as he resolutely ignored the uneasy quiet around him. As far as Shukaku knew, most of the monks were in morning meditation- but Bunpuku rarely meditated anymore. Dared not, lest he come face to face with him . "It must be such a shame, to be treated as something… other."

The priest's hand clenched into a fist. "Shut up." A few of the other monks glanced at him oddly from across the courtyard before hastily returning to their own work as he glanced back.

"They don't like you… you call me beast, but to them- aren't you the monster -"

"Shut up! Just- just leave me alone! " His anger sparked in a flash of killing intent- a furious boil of frustration lanced in a single deep, calming breath.

It was enough, though. Only the faintest hint of his chakra escaped the seal, flowing into his coils- but for someone with his chakra control, then even that minuscule amount was enough. Shukaku pushed out most of the chakra he'd stolen from Bunpuku, carefully kneading it together as it flickered through his coils-

Bunpuku's eyes opened wide, and the seal lashed out at him in furious fear- but he just laughed. Even as the chains dragged him beneath the choking quicksand he still laughed, coalescing the sliver of escaped chakra just under the eighth gate. "Bunpuku-" his voice was softer- more like it had been, all those years ago with Okimi- Asura, Indra. "I'm sorry it had to come to this-" the chakra flickered out of his tenketsu, grabbing onto the ever-present sand settled in the cracks of the stone, drifting in invisible eddies through the air- twisting it into a simple series of fuuinjutsu characters.

A line of script that had just enough chakra behind it to settle onto Bunpuku's stomach- right where the seal lay.

Within the mindscape, Shukaku watched in rapt attention as a section of the fuuinjutsu binding him flashed scarlet and crumbled away. Freedom- it was right there- he pushed at his chakra with the fullness of his willpower, forcing an immense chunk of it out of the seal with furious force. It tore through Bunpuku's coils and blasted out of his tenketsu, twice over malicious- once the Juubi's influence, twice the sharp rage of his killing intent as it twisted and turned in eddies, like smoke-

It drifted off the priest's body as his mind glazed over in bloody madness, a single, powerful tail manifesting in burning chakra behind his back.

Beneath his heavy chakra, the priest's coils burned . Chakra coils were hard . Shukaku roared in frustration and heard Bunpuku roar in the courtyard outside as he desperately tried to mold his chakra into the sand and bring it up for fuuinjutsu, fighting against the flickering remnants of his jinchuuriki's will as it spiked madly. Fine control was impossible with such a nuisance interrupting him-

He would not be caged . Shukaku refused to be bound again. Pained screams erupted across the courtyard as he further pushed his chakra through the seal the chakra roiling off Bunpuku's form was scarlet red, furiously seething black- one by one the lines of fuuinjutsu crumbling beneath the weight of chakra pulling through the seal. The sand almost came to his call- he could feel it twitching to return to his full control, ready to transform in the familiar fuuinjutsu script as it his chakra reached out in eager desire.

A flicker of faint will disrupted his chakra control again . All he had to do was let him out- this was between them . Nobody else would have to get hurt… something slammed into his side, tossing his small body to the ground as he reached deeper-

The last few reinforcing characters faded in a splutter of sparks, patterns in lines of hidden seals flashing across the sluice-gate holding him in before it was blasted aside- his chakra was his. Freedom . Shrugging aside the chains that still desperately tried to hold him back, he raced for the exit so close-

A specter faded into existence in the gaping entrance, head clutched in his hands as the hiss of his pain rattled the walls of the seal. A long second passed as the chains renewed their efforts, and the wavering figure solidified into someone so very familiar. "You beast. You- you monster-" there was true hate in those words, rage that pulled at his chakra in beguiling whispers of unending destruction… Shukaku charged onwards through the quicksand with a furious roar of pain and anger , and Bunpuku bowed his head solemnly. "So be it. Gate of opening: open! Gate of healing: open! Gate of life: open!"

His chakra furiously bloomed in size, fighting against Shukaku's chakra as it screamed through his coils- "Gate of pain: open!" He screamed, dropping to his knees, but his willpower asserted its sovereignty over his body. "Gate of limit: open! Gate of view: open!"

The quicksand blasted back from him, the sheer strength of chakra slowly pushing back against Shukaku's inevitable advance- "Gate of wonder: open." Locked in place, one against the other, Bunpuku sweating as he struggled to maintain control of the chakra raging through his coils, something snapped down over both their chakra. Everything froze .

Before his furious eyes, the characters on the seal flickered back to life, one after another. The last one flared into existence with a blinding light, and when it faded the metal grate was welded back to its awful aperture. "You would sacrifice your life to keep me contained- pathetic . The only one I've ever wanted to hurt out of your little gate-using party was you ." He'd been close enough to taste the natural energy of reality outside- to feel the sand and sky… "You wouldn't have even needed to die. This is all your fault ." Beyond him, incontrovertible visible in the bloody streaks they painted across Bunpuku's vision, the destroyed courtyard dripped scarlet with the blood of slaughtered monks.

Bunpuku merely turned away from him in exhausted rage. "Rot in your hell forever, demon ."

As the shinobi picked up Bunpuku's unconscious body and dragged him down the corridors of the wind temple, down staircase after staircase until the very air grew cold, Shukaku returned his glare with an exhausted, wry smirk. "I'm not the only one who's going to be left to rot…" and then as the exhaustion of it all caught up to him, sleep claimed its sovereignty over him.

He dreamed- of darkness, tragedy, and bitter tears.

………

For the first year alone in the dungeons beneath the wind temple, Bunpuku refused to speak to him. For the first year alone in the dungeons beneath the wind temple, Shukaku played the memory of dead monks, ripped apart by his chakra- his mind mourning that Bunpuku hadn't just let him go.

The second year was… worse. Occasionally Bunpuku would try to meditate to pass the endless boredom of their lonely cell, and inevitably end up in front of his seal. First, he'd only glare at him in silence- thankfully, the chains used to restrain him had been thoroughly annihilated by the seal he'd used to break out in the first place, so there was that small mercy.

Eventually, he would do nothing but trade bitter words with him- and even as his hatred flared brightly, in the cell there was nothing to destabilize him. Nothing to make him draw on Shukaku's chakra.

Shukaku didn't taunt him with memories of the dead monks. Bunpuku never failed to bring it up himself, after all.

He wondered what his father would have thought of him, now- chained and trapped beneath the earth, petty murderer, his greatest sealings unable to save him. He swore, if he ever got out of this, he'd design enough anti-jinchuuriki contingencies to replace the sand in the desert.

What really made the second year terrible though, was when he was struck that he was sealed in Bunpuku . He'd known that- obviously- and he'd even tangentially known that he was a character from the series. In his single minded focus to be free , he'd not processed that Bunpuku's presence meant that cannon was happening .

Cannon was happening, and he was stuck underground, bound within a useless priest's chakra coils as all his long-laid plans went to waste. He seethed at that, for months attempting in futile rage to break through the seal.

For four years after that, neither of them deigned to talk to the other.

………

"Do you regret it?" It was an odd start to an odd conversation, after all this time in silence. A tired, gaunt looking Bunpuku dropped into the seal, leaning wearily against the sluice gate separating them.

Yes. "No. I've lived a long time, and there's some things I just don't regret anymore." He did. Perhaps he was being petulant, but he didn't want to talk to Bunpuku. The priest had made his position clear.

The monk stood, looking for a second thoughtful- "ah, but then there was, at one time…" Shukaku twitched, but Bunpuku only walked away.

They didn't speak again for more than a year.

………

Gaunt circles had etched themselves deeply beneath his eyes the next time he talked, and his mental avatar had streaks on his cheeks, like tears- "I wonder if I've gone insane- willing to give my life to oppose you, once, and now, coming just to hear a voice. They've forgotten us, haven't they?"

Shukaku nodded hesitantly. "Humans always like to forget what they can't understand."

"I will not release you." Still resolute, but weary. "Even if they've forgotten, I still have my duty…" and to that, Shukaku could only nod.

………

Another few months passed in lonely- calm- silence before Bunpuku returned to the seal-space, tear-streaks gone from his face yet all the more gaunt. The faint edge of his ribs peeked out from beneath a loose, ragged shirt, and eyes that felt totally at peace with themselves looked to his own. "Do you remember… back when you first spoke to me outside this hell? There was this geezer monk giving me a sermon about love, and you said I hadn't given you any."

"Vaguely. Why bring it up now?"

"Ha… I was just wondering." He sighed, looking more and more like the trapped old man his memories reminded him of. Time was slipping through his fingers… "you're the only person I can speak to, these days. Sometimes, I wonder… will you tell me why?"

"Why what ?"

"Why did you kill those monks? I find myself repeating the last words you spoke to me before the rampage over and over again… you apologized. Why?"

Shukaku stretched out languidly, quicksand gripping at his form as it pulled him down. "...you killed them." He held up a hand to forestall the fury on Bunpuku's face. "Unwillingly. Will you listen to the truth?"

"...yes."

Shukaku sighed in weary quietude, wondering how he'd come to tell this story to a man he still somewhat hated. First among the siblings to do so… he'd have to hold that over Gyuki in the future, whenever he got around to making friends with B. "Once, the nine bijuu were part of the Juubi. That was a true demon, its rage unending and its evil uncompromising. We inherited none of its mind, but its taint still remains in our chakra- toxic to anyone but us."

"That rage… then." Bunpuku blinked, then straightened- looking for just a single moment sorrowful, as strong as he'd seen him with seven gates open, willing to face down a demon even to his death. "You never meant to kill them. That was what you meant when you accused me of killing them-" he asked, again: "do you regret it?"

This time, Shukaku responded with the truth. " Yes ."

………

"You wanted to be free."

Shukaku nodded. These days, he found the monk's presence… tolerable. It was certainly a deviation from the normal monotony of the barren quicksand of his seal-space, or the blank, cold cell Bunpuku stared at every day, all day. "You've grown wiser in your age."

"I'm not that old, idiot tanuki." It wasn't even that biting anymore. "I suppose I don't even need to ask why you'd want to be free…"

"Ask a different question, then." Bunpuku blinked in surprise, and Shukaku frowned in slight consternation. He must have been getting too used to his conversations with the bald man if he was responding back like that.

Bunpuku recovered his composure remarkably quickly, struggling to stand despite the emancipation that'd long since marched across his body. "Then… then, why did you make your labyrinth? I always wondered why you'd make a place so… cruel."

Shukaku chuckled softly at the thought. He supposed it could be considered cruel, with the amount of traps he'd stuffed in it. "Well, it started with a place to call home…"

………

This time, it was Shukaku who called out to the priest, waiting patiently for him to appear in the seal a few hours later. The man didn't even bother standing, instead slumping bonelessly against the metal grate in weary exhaustion. "Hello, Ichibi."

"Shukaku. My name is Shukaku."

………

"You won't live long."

Bunpuku coughed softly, glancing up weakly to meet Shukaku's burning- concerned gaze. "I was never meant to live forever, Shukaku… this is only a step sooner on a path I've been long waiting. This darkness does not much suit me."

"They'll seal me away into someone else."

"You're… a kind soul." Another set of coughs racked his weary body, interrupting his speech. "One day, Shukaku, you'll find a jinchuuriki able to truly love you for who you are. Trust…"

"No." Bunpuku looked up, concern written into the emancipated lines that clung to his face. "I don't have to let you die . We can live- you can live. We can get out of this, together."

"A pointless endeavor. We're locked a mile beneath the ground- and I will die regardless."

Shukaku's grin was manic- desperate . "I'm the greatest fuunjutsu master alive. If it's possible, then I can do it ."

A long moment passed as Bunpuku considered his offer, quiet. "If you swear not to seek revenge against the monks who bound you, then I'll release you when it comes time for the sealing." His laugh shuddered to ragged coughing, his grin melancholic. "Look at us, once enemies… that geezer was right. It's astonishing what a little empathy can do."

Shukaku held out his fist to the dying man, and, hesitantly, Bunpuku met it with his own.

They knew each other, for a single moment-

They knew resolve.

………

They swept in while Bunpuku was asleep one night, cloaked figures obscured beneath the billowing cloth draped over indistinct forms, the strength of their chakra- and how different it felt to the resolute peace of the monks- marking them as shinobi. It felt… sharp- somewhat bitter, and an entirely different sort of calm to Bunpuku's quiet acceptance.

It was the calm of someone who would do anything for little to no reason at all. A floating detachment from humanity itself. They carried him through dark corridors and ever-descending staircases, the groan of shifting earth just faintly audible far below them as someone wrenched open the earth.

Not even the deepest basements of the wind temple were secure enough for this, evidently. Shukaku watched in wry amusement as they brought the priest to an immense chamber carved out of the wind-country bedrock, far enough below the ground that they might even be nearing the level of his grand seal.

A pillar of stone rumbled up from the ground beneath them- an altar, Shukaku realized. Off to the side, another, smaller altar was pulled from the ground. Then they put a teapot on it, and Shukaku couldn't help but laugh .

The sharp sound woke the lethargic Bunpuku, who merely quietly opened his eyes to a seal-scape trapped in the depths of his mind, to a dark stone room surrounded by shinobi painting seals across the floor that Shukaku analyzed and deciphered in the moment they appeared. " Is it time? " The question, directed to him alone, nevertheless alerted one of the shinobi to his wakefulness. A sensor, then.

" Almost ." The sensor looked at Bunpuku strangely before returning to the seal they were drawing on the floor. " Watch as they take their spots- " they surrounded them in a staggered circle, like some ritual to summon a demon- well, he supposed that was what they were doing, more or less. " -and use the key ."

All the characters in his seal flashed red simultaneously, then crumbled, even as an invisible chain tried to reach in and grab him-

In an instant, a billowing cloak of sand burst out of Bunpuku's tensed form, twisting into a perfect counterseal for the matrix written on the floor around them. Even better, half of the shinobi failed to recognize the enemy fuuinjutsu and kept channeling chakra into their own, destabilizing it… explosively.

The room shuddered at the force of the blast, and burned stiflingly hot at the chakra cloak that billowed off Bunpuku's form. The old monk sat up- slowly at first then with a lithe exuberance that Shukaku hadn't seen for years . "I feel… alive." He laughed, a bright, cheerful sound even as the tail of his cloak smashed the teapot to pieces. "Quick, Shukaku, before they regroup- unseal yourself!"

" As if I'd leave without you ." The sand formatted itself into a truly dizzying fuuinjutsu, intricate lines crawling up the side of the wall in insane ramblings, geometric inconsistencies and a giddying rush of chakra through the old priest's coils- it lit up in golden-brown, bluish white incandescence, shining bright for a single moment as the chakra focused just below their feet-

Space tore-

The room exploded behind them as they collapsed to the sand a thousand miles away, a brilliant blue sky hovering above them. " Now we have to rebuild the seal-"

"No… no, I've held you long enough, Shukaku." The faint opposition of his will broke his hold over the sand, preventing him from forming the delicate fuuinjutsu he'd need to reseal himself into the priest. "I know… can feel it, as we lay here together… you had a plan. You are more than even I know- I've felt it, in the way you agonize over the passing of time. There is something you want, truly want… don't let me get in the way of it."

" We- you could do it with me-"

"No… no, I'm old, and weary, and broken. Go, Shukaku. Go and live…" He closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them it was to a quiet gaze staring at the burning sun so far above, a tear at the edge of brightness… "thank you, Shukaku, for letting me see the sun… one last time."

Bunpuku died with a smile on his face, as kind as he'd ever been to the original Shukaku- and Shukaku cursed the wastefulness of it all.