Past

The stone wasn't quite so blinding anymore, now that the sun was setting.

Naruto stared out towards the red and pink on the horizon beyond the forest. Now that he was out of the woods, he could see that the sunset, and thus the Kyuubi-tree, was clockwise by maybe around four hours from the path of death. That meant that, for some reason, Naruto had zig-zagged on his way to this huge rock with its nine streams. All he could figure was that Yuki had thrown him crooked, maybe?

He was totally going to tease her about that when she got here.

The nine streams on the stone were so clear it was hard to even see them. The stone beneath them was just so bright and clean and white, and the streams each had their own little groove in the rock. The name of the rock meant that it was supposed to be nine grooves for each of the Kyuubi's tails, and they did look soft enough. They weren't cracks or divots or even just how the stone happened to be shaped. All Naruto could compare it to was like wrinkled bedsheets, or glazed pottery. Between the silent water's waves and the stone's waves, the whole place just came across to Naruto as inexplicably smooth. It reminded him a lot of Yuki's tails.

With a loud sigh, Naruto leaned back and grimaced. The first thing he'd done when he got here was drink as much water as he physically could. Now, whenever he moved he kind of…sloshed. He'd never sloshed before. There wasn't any food here, though, and sloshing was way better for his stomach than grumbling and twisting.

It hadn't been three days yet. The sun hadn't set quite all the way, which meant it hadn't been three days. So, Yuki was definitely coming. Because Naruto trusted Yuki, and she'd said she'd be here.

She was coming.

She'd be here.

She was totally okay.

The last tiny sliver of sun just touched the horizon, and Naruto's heart clenched in his chest.

"Naruto!"

Naruto whipped around towards the call. There, bounding out of the woods, there she was! She'd made it! Her teeth were all bared in a grisly smile, and with every leap she took towards Naruto her hind legs kicked higher and higher until she was prancing towards him like a giant puppy. With a yelp of his own, Naruto threw himself upright and leaped up onto his feet, sprinting out across the stone towards Yuki.

"Yukiiiiiiii!" Throwing out his arm, Naruto collided against Yuki just at the edge of the stone, and then he had his arm around her. But more importantly, all of her tails were wrapped up around him and she was laughing and warm and right there! "Yuki!" he mumbled again, this time buried in the thick fur of her chest and throat. He could feel her massive pulse, and he loved every single thump of it.

"Oh, my Naruto, my kit, I was so scared! Thank the Kyuubi you're okay!" When Naruto had been little, he'd been at a playground, once, before he'd been run off, and some stupid littler kid had wandered off. The kid's mom, it must've been his mom, had yelled the dumb kid's name over and over until he came out from under the slide. When she spotted the kid, the mom had scooped him up and said 'Thank goodness'. The tone she'd had, like her most precious treasure had been found, that was how Yuki sounded. Naruto's eyes went hot and blurry. Yuki probably didn't notice, which Naruto was super glad about, because she just stayed wrapped around him, running several of her tails up and down his ribs. "Oh, oh no," she moaned after a few sweeps, "you're so skinny!" Naruto's stomach swooped and his eyes got hotter and wetter. Quickly, he pulled his face out of Yuki's fur to glare up at her.

"You were almost late-ttebayo!" he scolded. Yuki's ears flicked back over a gleaming red set of puppy-eyes. Naruto pouted. That just wasn't fair!

"But I was on time!" said Yuki, tilting her head and wrapping more tails around his stomach. It growled, and Yuki eyed his torso with a grin. A single tail rose from behind her. There was a large sack slung over the curl of the tip. "And," she continued, "I brought dinner?"

Naruto eyed the sack for a moment, but he just couldn't keep his pout when Yuki started wiggling her fuzzy eyebrows at him like some big dork. In its place, a smile stretched over Naruto's cheeks against his will. Oddly, when he smiled like this, without a choice, his eyes didn't scrunch shut like when he smiled on purpose. Naruto figured that was okay, though, because it meant his eyes were open when Yuki smiled back, before opening the sack and dumping out the tastiest feast Naruto had seen in months.

Yuki was the best. Dattebayo.

"We'll need to leave sometime today, kit. Now that you've slept a good night through and eaten some solid meals, it's best not to linger where that human wretch could catch up."

Naruto felt weird, hearing Yuki talk about Takashi. Like, he'd spent over a month with Takashi, then only a few days with Yuki, and then a month all alone. And now, Yuki had only just found him last night! He didn't even really get what was going on. Not like he was being stupid about it, he got that Takashi wanted to catch him and then use the Kyuubi to hurt Konoha, but he also was having some trouble figuring out just why all of these things were happening. Like, for the first time, Naruto thought it was very strange, that he out of anybody had the Kyuubi inside of him, that he out of anybody had ended up in this situation. And Takashi and Yuki, they were both weird too, maybe, because Naruto was pretty sure he knew what they wanted, but why they wanted it was beyond him in so many ways. He wanted to understand them. Both of them.

"Hey, Yuki?" he called. Yuki looked up from where she was rearranging something or other in her sack. She had a fuuinjutsu brush between her teeth. "Uh, um." The longer Yuki looked at him, the more Naruto panicked. "Where are we going!" he yelped. Yuki stared at him a moment longer. Then, she shrugged and spun the brush away into some hidden place in thin air.

"Ideally, we're getting you back to Konoha, where Takashi won't be able to take you so easily. Then I can get on with hunting him down without putting you at risk." Yuki shrugged again. "The humans there have to be good for something, if you lasted this long. Though," she eyed him thoughtfully, "you are fairly cunning yourself. I know you've been able to protect yourself before. How have you been doing without access to your chakra?"

Naruto gulped. He'd completely forgotten he couldn't use any jutsus anymore.

The skin on his stomach was just as scarred and stretched as it had felt when he woke up the first time from the Kyuubi Tree fight. In the woods, it had reminded him of what was inside him so often, that he'd kind of started to think of it as a way for the Kyuubi to get out rather than as something that kept the Kyuubi in. And, well, kept him inside as well. He was his chakra, kind of, yeah? He thought he could remember Iruka-sensei saying something like that, once.

"Naruto." Naruto looked up to see Yuki staring back at him, eyes warm and crinkled. He took a deep breath. It'd been a while since he'd gone so long without talking, and he had the sinking suspicion that he was going to keep forgetting to answer Yuki for a few days yet, before he got used to someone being there again. Yuki's eyes softened further. She leaned down close, and Naruto drew his knees up to his chest. He felt super small at first, next to Yuki, but then she wrapped herself around him like a mama cat around a kitten, and then he just felt warm. "We'll get you back to Konoha, little fox," she said. Naruto winced, and Yuki coiled tighter. "What's the matter, Naruto?"

"Nothing," Naruto muttered reflexively. Yuki stayed wrapped around him, silent and strong. She didn't agree with him and change the subject. She also didn't call him on lying. It took a minute for Naruto to try again, but her quiet made it easier. "So," he whispered, "I'm going home to Konoha, and then you're gonna stay here."

"Ah, I see."

Naruto frowned and squinted up at Yuki's massive, looming head. "Whuh?" he called. Yuki's warm breath puffed in his face, and he could feel his bangs blow away from his forehead. It still felt weird, having his forehead bare. Yuki's face came in close to his until one single, red eye was level with his face, staring deep into his own. When she spoke, Yuki's voice echoed not from her clenched jaw and bared teeth, but from deep in her chest.

"You're my kit, now, Naruto," she said. A growl rumbled beneath her words. "You need to be in Konoha, and so that's where I'll be going. I am not abandoning you."

Naruto could feel his lungs expand, bending at the edges with how wonderful her words made him feel.

"Oh," he weakly replied. Yuki's big eye blinked once, slow. "Um, sorry, for, um, uh. I didn't, I didn't mean…"

"I know. I understand." Yuki pulled her head back away, and retreated further away from him to return her attentions to their travel sack. "Thank you for the apology, Naruto. Don't worry anymore, now, okay?"

"Yeah," said Naruto. One of Yuki's tails had remained wrapped loosely around his ankle. He could easily get away if he wanted, but that wasn't the point, he didn't think. "Okay."

The Kyuubi stone, with its nine streams, was even brighter in the morning light than in the dusk light, blinding white where the sunset made the stone burn orange and gold. The sun wasn't climbing in the sky, though, just skating its path around the edge of the world like always, so Naruto couldn't begin to guess why the sky was different colors at different times of day if the sun never actually got any higher. Just sitting and staring at the sky was nice, though.

Or rather, it had been for the first three days. Now, Naruto had company and he was very ready to go home.

"So how do we get back to Konoha? Do we get to write a seal?" he asked. Yuki was filling up the last of a long line of funnel-topped bottles with water, but she looked up to answer him immediately. Her attention made Naruto feel solid. Like, Yuki was solid and reliable and she payed attention to Naruto so he also got to be solid and reliable.

"Mmm," she hummed. One tail flicked up to tap her chin thoughtfully. "No. It's not quite that easy, see. There can't just be a seal on this side of the world, but there has to be one in your world as well. The nine trees are usually the only places that reliably have some marker on the other side. But!" Yuki's tail darted away and she beamed over her shoulder to Naruto. "There is one place where a seal remains."

"Cool!" Naruto yelled. "Where is it?"

"Ah," Yuki slowly replied. The tail returned, and her smile faded. "What you have to understand about the summoning realm is that it's the same world as yours, in many ways. We live amongst the same hills and oceans, separated only by who does the living. Here, chakra floods the world untouched. There, it is humans. But, beneath it all, the bedrock is the same." Yuki was frowning, now. Naruto eyed her warily. He thought he was understanding what she was saying, but he didn't get what that had to do with where they were going, and that made him kind of nervous. "The forest surrounding the Kyuubi Tree, for example, is the same forest which surrounds Konoha, only changed in the places where chakra, here, has taken root, and where humans, there, have cut those roots away. The forest you traversed is, plainly put, the forest that would be in your world if Konoha had never existed."

Puffing up his cheeks, Naruto rocked forward in his seat and grabbed his ankles in his one hand. "What's all this gotta do with getting home?" he asked. Yuki put down the last water bottle and turned to face him fully.

"There is one place in your world with the skill in sealing we need." As she spoke, Yuki's tails, as one, rotated to point back into the forest he'd come from, only this time they pointed in the direction in which the plants unanimously died. "Tomorrow, we will set out for the red shores of Uzushio. Tomorrow, we will begin your journey home."

The green light of foxfire swirled around Naruto and Yuki.

He and Yuki had ventured back into the forest together, and several days had passed in simple peaceful walking. Their journey had been quiet, so far. At first, Naruto had been stuck on the thought of Uzushio. Yuki had made sure that he understood that Uzushiogakure wouldn't be there. Still, something about Uzushio had made the Uzumaki choose it as their home. Maybe he'd love it as well. Except, Konoha was his home. And he'd never even met any Uzumaki. So, Naruto's thoughts just kept going in circles, round and round between Uzushio and Konoha until he gave up and decided to think about basically anything else. 'Anything else' was pretty limited thanks to being on a super long trip through a forest with nobody but Yuki. In all, Naruto was just about ready to burst he was so bored.

Naruto would later reflect that being bored was super underrated.

Yuki was walking at Naruto's side. He'd noticed early on that she was totally silent. Her paws didn't crinkle the leaves, snap any twigs, nothing. Her breaths were quiet, too. Her silence made Naruto self-conscious, and so he'd been trying to be quiet like her. He was pretty sure he'd gotten his breaths quiet, but walking quiet was way harder here in the woods than it was in Konoha. He could do it! He was too good at pranks to be completely useless at traveling silently. It was just harder work when it was for hours and hours and through a forest.

Eventually, Naruto couldn't stand it anymore and he yawned long and deep. His lone arm was always sore, these days, so he reached it up in a long stretch as well, groaning from deep in his chest. It came out a bit squeaky, but Naruto refused to acknowledge that.

Then, he made an even squeakier noise when Yuki used his arm being raised to jab a tail into his armpit.

Naruto hunched over with a yelp, scowling over at Yuki, who was snorting through poorly hidden giggles. He was just about ready to yell his displeasure, when her laughter cut off all at once and she stared him down with freezing cold eyes.

"You can't let your guard down," she said. "With ninjutsu taken from you, likely for the rest of your life, your taijutsu and fuuinjutsu have to be flawless. You've been doing well at practicing silence, but that won't be enough for long." Just as quickly as the blank cold had fallen over her face, Yuki grinned once again, baring all of her sharp white teeth. "So, to keep my precious kit safe, I'm just going to have to tickle some situational awareness into you!"

"Wha-?" Naruto barely had time to gasp before Yuki was on him, jabbing tails at his neck and his stump, assaulting him with bits of white fluff.

Their pace forward sped up significantly as Naruto learned to sprint for his dignity away from the madly giggling fox nipping at his heels.

Every night, Naruto flopped over wherever they chose to stop. Running was so exhausting! It didn't used to be, but all of his steps were off, now. He didn't know, before, just how much work his left arm did even when he wasn't using it. It kept him balanced, and propelled him forward, stabilized him. Now it was gone every other bit of his body felt like it was working even harder.

It didn't help that Yuki was totally targeting the spot where she'd bitten it off.

"Hey, hey," he huffed at Yuki. He was leaning against her flank, rising and falling with her steady breaths. She didn't ever get tired for some reason. Naruto wanted to be like her so much that he could taste it! "Why do you gotta keep targeting my stump, huh? That's totally not fair! And tickling it feels weird, too. Like, I don't think I'm supposed to have skin there, so you touching feels, mmm, yanno."

"Everyone you ever fight is going to target it, Naruto," Yuki gently replied. Naruto slumped slightly against her. "The better you get at dealing with it, the more a weakness can be a strength. You'll get better. You're already getting better. If you can think of a better way for me to train you, I'd be happy to try it, but for now this seems like our best option."

"It's embarrassing," Naruto muttered. He wasn't truly arguing, he got Yuki's point. But still! Yuki's laugh rumbled through her chest against Naruto's back.

"You're my kit," said Yuki, voice dripping in affection. Naruto's face heated, but his stomach squirmed happily. "It's my job to embarrass you!"

"No it's not!" he yelled. Yuki's laughs got more jarring, until Naruto sat up and turned to plant his palm against her flank. "You just think it's funny!"

"Ha ha!" Control was not returning to Yuki. Rather, she was laughing harder. "Making the world a bit funnier is my job! Didn't you know, Naruto? The world is absurd, chaotic, and full of unexpected joys. I consider it not just my job, but my calling to add some laughter to the mix."

"Heh," Naruto huffed. He could kind of understand that. The urge to prank somebody always got worse, after all, when the villagers were being particularly mean. It was like, if he didn't understand why people were doing things, and the world was all strange and hostile, he might as well try to make it better by making a joke of it. Still. He'd never really thought, much, that playing a prank could maybe make the world better.

"Ah, still. Best we get you started on your fuuinjutsu, now your taijutsu is starting to come along."

"Eh!?" Naruto bolted upright, standing before Yuki on steady feet. He was kind of proud, actually, not long ago he'd have been off balance for a second while his body remembered that he was missing some weight on his left. "You're gonna teach me more seals? Yes! What first? Can I have a brush? Can we learn more tomorrow, too?"

"Mmm, of course," Yuki replied. "You're a fox, sealing is basically required, and from what I've gathered you have a talent for it. Not to mention all of that chakra you've got should go to some use, if ninjutsu isn't an option anymore. Tell me, what have you learned so far?"

Naruto wilted. This was going to be way more embarrassing than the taijutsu practice. "Well, ano," he said, rubbing at the back of his neck. Yuki didn't make a jab at his opening this time, thank goodness. "I only kind of learned how to make a storage seal, but I can't manage to seal anything but plain ol' air. Takashi said-" Naruto cut himself off with a gulp. Yuki shuffled towards him and wrapped a tail around his shoulders. "Um, that is, I learned all of the pieces for a storage seal, and how to put them together, but sometimes I got this idea that I could try something different and then Takashi would have me start over. I guess I'm not super great at seals, cuz I couldn't write ones like Takashi's, even when they were right in front of me." Naruto grimaced and looked away. He didn't want to see Yuki's face, not after she'd sounded so sure of his abilities. Not to mention, he wasn't a fox, and whatever foxes and sealing had to do with each other, this might be the thing that made Yuki decide he was a human after all and not worth her time.

"That's ridiculous." Naruto winced. He could feel Yuki staring at him, but still wasn't willing to look up. "You can't learn seals through mimicry, not entirely anyways. Not if you want to be a good seal master. It sounds to me that your instincts are better than I thought. After all, a storage seal for air is much more useful if it isn't used for storage."

"Huh?"

"Think about it." Yuki laid down her big head into her paws. Her seven long tails waved behind her, lazy like reeds above a pond. "When you play a prank, you never use an object for its intended use, right? A fight is much the same, as is sealing. You get much more use out of things by thinking about what they can do rather than what they should do. Like, mmm, water. It should be used for drinking or bathing, but a good prank uses water to soak someone or something, or make something slippery, maybe to move something, or even to hide something in an unexpected place. All parts of a seal are like that. No seal should be for 'storage' because a seal that can pull something into it, keep it there, and then release it again can do so much more than just store things!"

Naruto hadn't thought of it like that. Now that he was, he couldn't help but think that the ability to move air around, especially knowing, now, about stuff like air pressure, was way more useful than he'd thought.

"Could, maybe," said Naruto, staring ponderously into the air above him, "could I use it to make a super strong breeze? Or, like, a whirlpool of air? Or to use air to push things?"

"See, Naruto?" Yuki replied. "You do have a talent for this. You're thinking like a fox, now."

Six whole weeks.

Six whole weeks of training, of fluffy taijutsu completely different than anything he'd learned before, of fuuinjutsu totally different than all the stuff Takashi had said, and of talking and laughing and playing with Yuki, who never once left his side.

The trees were beginning to thin, now, as the foxfire growth gave way to normal old woods. Lots more sunlight shone through, as a result, and Naruto found he liked it lots better than the perpetual night of the foxfire forests. It was like the night felt more unreal and significant, when there was daylight there to remind him of what realness and being awake felt like. Yuki seemed pleased as well, if her bouncy steps and flouncy tails were anything to go by.

Naruto, too, was feeling not good, but better. Just yesterday, he'd managed to get in a hit on Yuki while avoiding her jabs! He'd gotten hit right after, sure, which had made Yuki scold him, but he was still kind of proud. And he could tell Yuki was, too.

Being a shinobi, even while missing an arm, it didn't feel impossible anymore.

As they approached their destination, Naruto was running ahead, peering into crannies and gaps, more out of boredom and excess energy than out of any real curiosity. Everything here looked the same after six whole weeks of walking. This was one of his rare breaks, though, and the lack of training was kind of getting to him. If they stopped, he could at least try to take a nap, but he wanted to reach Uzushio soon, too, and he knew Yuki did too.

So, when Naruto ducked his head to peek under a passing tree and spotted a monster, he was pretty surprised.

Naruto had to stifle a scream. He jerked back from the nook in the roots and scrambled towards Yuki, baring his teeth and clenching his fist all the while. Just as his back hit warm fur he felt a set of tails wind around him into a shield of fluff.

"Peace, little fox, it's okay. It can't do anything, we're okay."

Incredulously, Naruto kept his eyes on the monster beneath the tree and watched as, true to Yuki's word, the beast did not so much as twitch. On second observation, Naruto saw that its eyes were clouded and unmoving for all the creature was breathing.

"W-what is it?" he whispered up to Yuki. He'd never seen a creature anything like it. Its huge head and body, larger than three of Yuki, was flaming orange sliced through with black stripes and its massive paws boasted claws the size of kunai. Under all the fur, Naruto could tell that, even compared to Yuki, that thing was all muscle.

"She's called a tiger. Or, rather, a tigress. She's a Hyuuga summons. All the tigers were."

Naruto leaned in slightly to focus on the tiger's eyes. They looked cloudy, sure, but not in the natural way that Hinata-chan's were. The tiger just looked sick. "Hyuuga?" he asked, returning to his normal volume.

"They do something to their shinobi, bind their chakra into them. Only a few members of the Hyuuga did not have it, and their summons are long dead or gone. After the tigers began to fade, the remaining free elders took back their summoning contract. But those elders died a long time ago, and the contract with them. The only tigers remaining are those remnants of the bound Hyuuga. They're all like that. Lingering."

Naruto shuddered, and tore his eyes away from the tiger. "Why?"

Yuki shrugged above his head. "A summons is chakra given form. When contracted to a shinobi, their chakra and our selves, it's like, mmm, a reflection in a mirror. The Hyuuga, they have flesh bodies with which to perform actions not dictated by whatever curse this is. The summons, beings of pure chakra, had no such protection." Yuki sounded sad, and Naruto could appreciate why. It was a sad story, he could tell already. What set the hairs on the back of his neck standing on edge was the tone of pleasure in Yuki's voice. Like she'd been hoping for something like this. "When I was little, I met a tiger who managed to escape their seal when their summoner died. I thought someone must be dying, but when I and my father followed the sound of screaming, I found only a dying tiger. My father told me that evening about the tigers of old, before the Hyuuga began binding away their own people's chakra. They were proud, free hunters of the forests. The betrayal of the tigers by the Hyuuga can only be compared to the betrayal of kin." Yuki sighed and one tail twirled to wrap firmly around Naruto's hand. Something fell between Naruto's fingers and he grasped it under the pressure of Yuki's hold. He looked down to his hand. It was a kunai. "You've come a far way in your training, Naruto. Far enough that you're ready to learn this as well." Yuki paused, and the pride in her voice faded to something solid and regretful. "This tigress is a corpse waiting for her pain to end. Put her to rest, Naruto."

Naruto's fingers clenched around the kunai. He turned to look at the tigress. She didn't look alive or dead, asleep or awake. Yet, she still looked like she was watching him.

His arm was shaking.

When Naruto stepped away from her, the kunai left lodged in her massive skull, he stepped straight into Yuki's embrace. The first sob that shuddered through him shouldn't have been such a surprise, but even so it took him a moment to realize why his fingers were cramping from their grip on Yuki's pelt.

"Naruto." The whisper above him was accompanied by Yuki's heartbeat in his ear. The sound made Naruto's breath speed up, imagining that it was Yuki instead whose fur and bone had given way beneath his knife. "You must never forget this. Never forget what evil looks like, or how it spreads to infect everyone it touches. Chakra is life, and self, all in one. And so, it is also death. That's what makes us shinobi."