While scanning every inch of Naruto's body, Mo Ke also examined the Eight Trigrams Seal etched across the boy's belly in painstaking detail.
Two Four Symbols layered into an Eight Trigrams array, drawing the Nine Tails' power to bind the beast, circulating on its own without end. Any chakra that slipped the Four Symbols net would be purified, then fed back into Naruto to nourish him.
A flawless seal. Mo Ke could not find the faintest leak.
Which, frankly, made it interesting.
Because inside Naruto was not only the Nine Tails. Kushina's soul was there as well.
Mo Ke's smile turned wry. Namikaze Minato was Minato, a man who could decide to die without a blink, ruthless to himself and, when necessary, to others.
Mo Ke had assumed the Yellow Flash would leave a backdoor for Kushina. Instead, although Minato had agreed to let her linger in the world, her late doubts about the Will of Fire had likely made him wary.
Agreed, but not entirely.
Mo Ke had wondered why his own yin body had stayed quiet within Kushina, no mischief at all, and yet she still had not appeared after more than a year.
Turned out she had been snared by her husband's cleverness. It was the same as before. Only when Naruto clawed at the seal one day would Kushina be allowed to show herself.
In a way, that suited Mo Ke. One less chance for Kushina to emerge early and scramble his plans.
A thought sparked.
He felt a gaze brush across him from far away.
Within the seal space, Mo Ke turned toward that distant look. Ever since becoming a shinigami, his soul power had made his sixth sense razor sharp. Even the lightest attention left a clear direction.
The Hokage Tower.
So, just like the Fourth, a conscientious Kage. Hiruzen had barely left and already he could not rest, peering into his crystal ball to monitor Naruto again.
When the Third appeared earlier, Mo Ke had quietly tasted his attitude. A tailed beast could always sense malice.
The Third was gentle toward Naruto as a whole, yet that thin thread of hostility never fully faded.
That was natural. Naruto was not only the son of his disciple's disciple, he was also a dangerous jinchuriki.
Perhaps the malice was aimed at the Nine Tails, but Naruto and the fox were no longer separable. In the Third's eyes the child was dangerous by association.
In the old tale, Hiruzen often checked in on Naruto. It was not tenderness. It was simple evaluation of a host's mental stability.
He indulged the boy, letting pranks slide with a chuckle. He even half coaxed and half allowed him to peek at the Scroll of Seals.
Yet to Mo Ke, the instant Naruto became a jinchuriki, Hiruzen filed him as Uzumaki Naruto, host of the Nine Tails, not Namikaze Naruto, son of the Fourth.
Even the scarf Kushina knitted before she died was set aside on a high shelf, never once considered for the boy.
Over a decade later, Konohamaru and Naruto would find it among the Third's keepsakes in his attic.
Hiruzen's love existed, but only in small measures.
The watching presence faded. Satisfied that Naruto was stable, the old man was finally heading to bed.
Whether this lonely old LSP would call for late night company, Mo Ke could only shake his head and leave that thought drifting.
With Naruto's issue settled for the moment, Mo Ke left a sliver of attention to keep quiet watch, then pulled back and considered his own power.
Half of the Nine Tails' chakra, a body tempered by that chakra with fierce regeneration, Beast Bomb as his one native technique, spiritual pressure on the level of a squad captain, a Zanpakuto that bent space, and a handful of Hadō and Bakudō.
That was the sum of his visible strength.
It sounded formidable. A Nine Tails who could flicker through space and cast kidō should be able to scrap with super Kage level foes, at least for a while.
The system still stamped him B rank for a reason.
A tailed beast's threat is not a duelist's edge so much as an engine of destruction. Their terror lies in immortality, colossal size, and oceans of chakra. The village breaking kind.
Rasa, the Fourth Kazekage, died quietly, yet he suppressed Shukaku's riots more than once.
The Third Raikage brawled the Eight Tails head on, chopped off its tails, and even broke a horn for keeps.
Every village that crowns a Kage asks a simple question. Can you put down a rampaging tailed beast. For Konoha after the Third, the standard against the Nine Tails became, at minimum, keep it tied down.
Compared to raw beast power, a proper jinchuriki is stronger. Hosts are prodigies with natural Kage potential. Add a beast's cheat to that and one plus one becomes greater than two.
Nine Tails is the mightiest by chakra, yet in raw blast he is not in a different universe from the others. Shukaku has the least chakra, and besides the Nine Tails no one ranks him dead last without debate.
If you graded all nine, most would sit between B minus and B plus. Only the Nine Tails and the Eight Tails would comfortably fit B plus.
Half a Nine Tails still outclasses One through Seven and can stand toe to toe with the Eight.
Even so, split into yin and yang, each half is flawed. Regeneration is no longer a perpetual motion machine. A downgrade is inevitable.
If Mo Ke fought a complete Nine Tails, he could press the full beast at the start. With his current tools he could not deal telling damage. As his chakra and spiritual power ran down, the complete fox would turn the tide.
Slowly, yes, measured in years at their scale, but surely.
Right now Mo Ke resembled a Minato with deeper reserves and weaker finishing strokes. In the original tale, a Minato without Sage Mode or the Nine Tails' cloak would struggle to scratch the Third Raikage even if the man stood still.
Mo Ke faced the same wall. If he wanted to raze Konoha, space splits and Beast Bombs could do the job. If he wanted to move through Konoha freely, B brushing B plus would not be enough.
Even thinned, Konoha was a lean camel larger than a horse. On paper it still had fangs.
A Third Hokage early on his downslope, yet still holding the Reaper Death Seal. Danzo without Shisui's arm, perhaps, but likely already collecting Sharingan and Senju cells. Shisui himself with Mangekyō awakened. Jiraiya dropping in at odd times. Fugaku possibly awakening his own Mangekyō.
Add the Barrier Corps and Interception Teams, and the old lineages with their clan arts.
Beyond the walls was another Mangekyō owner, toying with summoning arrays and itching for a move.
Prudence whispered. Grind to A rank, super Kage, then start the fireworks.
How to climb. Given present constraints, Mo Ke would start with himself.
Perhaps because his soul was incomplete. Perhaps because his memories had not fully fused with the fox's.
His chakra control was competent but far from intuitive. By contrast, his shinigami powers had grown from nothing and flowed more smoothly.
At the moment, the two systems refused to help each other. He even stumbled when switching between them.
Like a gunman trained for one handed shooting. He owned a Desert Eagle, then someone handed him a heavy .45 revolver.
Stronger in theory, sure. But if he could draw only one at a time, what changed in practice.
The urgent task was to master both energies until he could wield them together, two streams braided into one fight. From one gun to two.
If he learned to use both in tandem, he might not be invincible among Kage, yet stepping back to B plus to claim a reward would be well within reach.
As for piercing the ceiling to A rank, Mo Ke already had a sketch. To make it real, he would still need complete command over chakra and shinigami power. Only then could the next door open.
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