"Granny, where are you. Naruto is scared."
"Uu… where did you go, Granny."
"Uu uu… Naruto is not a monster. Please don't leave Naruto alone. Naruto will be good. Uu… Granny…"
The faint crying drifted in and out.
Darkness pressed down over the room like a lid.
Time thinned into silence.
Then a malignant red light began to seep from the walls and floor, thick with fury and hate.
…
Mo Ke sat cross-legged on the water. His long Zanpakuto lay flat across his knees.
Sword meditation. The Shinigami's way to speak with the blade.
After a long while he opened his eyes, frustrated.
He knew his Zanpakuto's true name, yet he could not reach it. Not even a glimpse of its spirit.
Meditation carried him into the sword's inner world easily enough. It was his past life's cityscape, towers crowding the sky. All of it lifeless, washed in black and white.
No matter how he searched, the blade's spirit hid. Communication was a dream.
A Zanpakuto is a mirror of the heart. Its power is the shape of the wielder's desire.
Three Thousand Worlds controls space. Mo Ke doubted that came from some burning need to break the seal and run. He knew space alone might not crack a seal, and when the sword first formed he had only just been locked up. No desperate pressure yet.
Dissecting himself, he found the truth fast enough.
As a born powerhouse, the instant he learned there were countless other worlds beyond the two he knew, his heart pounded with the urge to conquer them all…
Yeah right.
He had suddenly gotten powers and wanted to go home to show off. That impatience birthed space control.
It also explained why the sword's inner world looked like skyscrapers from Earth.
No shame in that. To win glory and not go home is like wearing brocade at midnight. It kills you inside.
Shame or no, knowing the why changed nothing. The sword still refused to show itself. You cannot talk to what will not come out.
In a seal, time loses meaning. Mo Ke had no idea how long had passed.
He only knew that his reiatsu now moved like his own right hand, and space-steps through the blade were becoming second nature.
He lifted the Zanpakuto from his knees, held it at his side, and let go.
It did not fall. It winked out, as if slipping into a pocket world.
One trick of its space power. No scabbard, no problem. The blade stores itself. Stylish.
Kido had come along too. With relentless trial and error he restored:
Hadō 31 Shakkaho
Hadō 33 Sokatsui
Hadō 73 Soren Sokatsui
Hadō 90 Kurohitsugi
For binding he managed:
Bakudō 9 Geki
Bakudō 81 Danku
Shakkaho is a palm-launched red fireball. Basically a tiny, tiny Tailed Beast Bomb. Save it for chickens.
Sokatsui blasts blue light forward and down in a fast wave. Loud, pretty, chicken approved.
Soren Sokatsui is the grown-up version. Finally some punch.
Kurohitsugi, ranked at ninety, stands among the top spells. A jet-black coffin drops, seals the target, and skewers what is trapped within. In his past life even one-third power without chant knocked Captain Komamura flat. Also the hand pose is glorious. One finger to the sky. I defy heaven.
It was the hardest of the lot. He spent most of this seclusion on it.
Geki, number nine, locks foes in red bands. Low rank, decent utility when your pressure alone cannot floor someone.
Danku, number eighty-one, raises an air wall that blocks anything up to Hadō ninety. Honestly he felt he could tank most of that head-on, but practice is practice.
He remembered only so many incantations. Other spells he could name but not rebuild from looks alone. As for healing arts, they were just guiding reiatsu to gather spirit particles at wounds. Not worth study. The Nine-Tails' body knitted faster anyway.
A tailed beast is chakra incarnate, but not a pile of energy so much as a quota written into the world. When the Sage divided the beasts, he set their shares like invisible frames. Unless the share itself is stripped, a beast that "dies" reforms whole after a while.
That share can be altered by freak events. The Eight-Tails lost a horn to the Third Raikage. Before it grew back, Orochimaru cultured a one-horn sample, and the Eight-Tails stayed one-horned ever since.
Same idea here. Even if Mo Ke "died," his revival would still be the Yang half. The Yin side would not magically fill in.
He also trained standard chakra control in the anime way. Sitting on water required the basics.
Nature change Sorry. The Nine-Tails does not. Neither do I.
His fox memories held no ninjutsu at all. Only four flavors of Tailed Beast Bomb.
To be fair, aside from Shukaku dabbling in techniques, most bijuu are like Kurama. All front, no finesse.
Even so, with Shinigami power in hand and chakra control sharpened, he figured he could beat a full Nine-Tails with only his current half-power. His System rating still sat at B though, not B plus. Likely because his variety grew but the essence had not jumped a tier.
It would rise soon enough. Spirit particles were thin in this world, yet his pressure climbed, slow and steady. A little longer and he would hit B plus and unlock the next reward.
(Translation note inside his head. The author has not picked a prize yet. Also he is still sealed. New toys would just gather dust.)
Mo Ke's brow twitched. He looked toward the door of the seal.
The muddy water in front of the gate rippled. Rings widened, and the tremor bled through the gate into the seal itself.
When a ripple kissed the water under him, a feeling flooded his senses.
Loneliness. Fear. Confusion.
"Strange. Have I already been inside for ten years. Naruto's first real rampage should be in the Land of Waves."
"No. The flavor is wrong. In Waves he snapped from rage when Sasuke got hurt. This is not anger first."
Mo Ke's mouth curved. So the village had begun serving its cold neglect to Naruto.
The boy's feelings were spiking, but aside from the anger, the resonance did not match the Nine-Tails much. The sealing tag did not budge.
The old Kurama could only watch, anxious and helpless. Naruto could not enter the seal at this age.
Mo Ke was not the old Kurama. He guided his reiatsu along the ripples and tried to reach past the gate.
Light flashed in his eyes. It was working.
Tiny, slow, fragile, but a thread of pressure slipped out. Useless alone. Reiatsu was not a universal key like chakra. He did not rush.
He wrapped a wisp of chakra in that pressure and tried again.
As the ripples grew, he even glimpsed, faintly, a weeping child at their center. At last that wisp slid through the gate.
A translucent Mo Ke took shape outside the door.
Chakra is a wonder. It can even carry thought. Mo Ke inside and Mo Ke outside met eyes and shared the same fox-sharp smile.
He walked to the gate and tugged at the tag.
Nothing. He could not even touch it, as if an air wall stood between his hand and the paper.
So only Naruto himself could pull it.
Fine. He did not need to. The Mo Ke within kept wrapping and smuggling more chakra through.
Soon he had enough outside to last a long while. Any more and the leak would be obvious. He stopped.
He had no plan to break out. Sneaking a sliver of awareness outside to talk with little Naruto from time to time would be enough.
The safest place for now was still the kid's belly.
About that promise to Minato, no funny business before Naruto grows up
Please. I come from modern times. Telling a harmless little lie is a foundational virtue. If oaths really called lightning, the ones I swore in my last life could have vaporized the planet.
When I finish this episode I will do my homework, I swear.
After this last set of five-finger exercises I will delete everything and become a man of taste, I swear.
At work I swear I was not looking at her. I was studying the dog she was walking.
There were more. He had lost count.
He was about to stop when he looked at the crying boy again and frowned.
What is this. The Third watches Naruto's state through a crystal ball. Why is the child crying this long with no one to comfort him.
Modern soul or not, watching a one-year-old sob alone pricked him. It was not time to speak to Naruto yet. The boy was too small to keep a secret.
He made a choice. Inside the gate he stripped away the reiatsu wrapping and let raw, blood-red Nine-Tails chakra leak through the crack.
The crying had weakened the seam. It would widen.
Outside, Mo Ke slid away to the side and wrapped himself tight with reiatsu.
The red flood rolled out, spreading over the child's shadow.
In the dark apartment, where Naruto sat on the floor and wept, change began.
The six whisker lines thickened. A red glint lit in his rubbed-raw eyes. Behind his tiny back, a fox silhouette rose.
The ominous, violent chakra howled its presence across Konoha.
Third Hokage, you idiot. If you do not come now, your Nine-Tails is coming out.
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