Kekkei Genkai
Fox
They need to clean up, before they can rejoin the world as a group of civilians. Naruto knows she must cut a frightening figure, at the moment, ripped flak jacket, covered in dried blood. The others aren’t much better.
For the second time in as many days, she finds herself pouring over their maps, trying to find water. About two miles away from their camp, some Konoha shinobi had marked water, far from any known settlements or farms.
They set off for the water source, far off from the beaten path walked by civilians, or even the shinobi trails that criss-cross the landscape. It’s safe to talk, and so they do - Tenzo and Shisui had had the same thought as her about rice, and they now own two mostly-full sacks of it, and miso paste. They’ll eat hot food, tonight. Kakashi hopes there will be fish wherever they’re headed, by far the best fisherman of any of them.
The path is difficult, dipping up and down sharply. Several times, they have to stop and help Shisui, still finding his balance, over heaps of stones and through dense brush. Naruto wasn’t much better, knees and hips protesting the steep inclines.
For the most part, though, they plan - they’ll not all four pretend to know each other. Civilians often banded together for travel, joining up small groups into larger caravans for protection against bandits, against shinobi. It would hardly be worth remarking on, if, several days apart, two pairs joined a large caravan.
Then they make it to the top of the final stony ridge, and it’s not a pond, or a pool, or a stream. It’s a hot spring.
Naruto whoops and races down the slope, closely followed by Shisui. Reaching the shore, she plunges her hand into the steaming water.
“It’s perfect!” she declares, laughing. Shisui draws a deep breath, but Naruto beats him to it - “I call first!”
It’s hardly necessary. Naruto always gets to go first, out on missions like this. She’s ever been a little girl on a team of men, and it occasionally works in her favour. There won’t be fish to eat, but there will be something else, maybe even something better.
Naruto waves her hand, dismissively. “Come back in an hour,” she says, still smiling, “Try to catch a rabbit or something, whatever it is you boys do while I’m gone.”
For the second time in two days, Naruto unbuckles her flak jacket. She doesn’t bother being neat, or trying to clean her uniform of the blood, dirt, and sweat that’s soaked into every fibre. She slides her mask off, next, and sets it on the side of the spring. For a long moment, she stares at it - the red outline of the eyes, the mischievous slash of its mouth, the painted whiskers. A mirror of her own face, in a way.
In all likelihood, Naruto will never don this mask again. Never be called Fox. That name had been with her for six years, over a third of her life. She thinks she might have been called Fox more often than Naruto.
Next were her shoes. She unwraps the strips of cloth that tamp down the legs of her trousers, then slips out of her trousers and shirt. Again, she felt carefully over her body, her fingers, her toes, her ribs - poorly healed breaks would cost her, but even more so if they were left that way. As it is, it is difficult to distinguish any specific injuries from her full-body aches.
And - there. Naruto’s fingers catch on a bump, then another. The sixth and seventh ribs on her left side, poorly knitted back together. She took a deep breath - it hurt, but then, it was hard to know if it was from the still-healing damage to her lung, the malformed ribs, or overusing Kurama’s chakra.
She can see the bruises, underneath the brown of old blood, mottled purple and yellow and green. And the fresh, pink scar, so very neat, right under her breast. It must have just missed her heart, she thought. She stripped completely and, all at once, slid underneath the water.
It is hot enough to hurt, just a bit. Just for a moment. Naruto surfaces, relishing the way the dried blood swirls away, finally off her. The spring isn’t deep, not really - maybe three feet of water, slightly milky, and just the right temperature. Naruto kicks off the bottom and floats on her back, feeling the cold air hit her nose, her chest, her toes.
For the first time in many months, Naruto thinks of Hirohito. The thought comes to her, unbidden - she can imagine the smell of his hair under her nose as if she had held him just that morning. He will be six years old now, maybe seven. She wonders if he grew into his Uzumaki features the way she suspected he would. She wonders if his mother hates her, if he has been raised on tales of a traitorous kinswoman, a thief in the night. A girl who hid her hair and her name and her intentions until it was far too late for anyone to do anything about it.
There will be more hiding, more lying, more flying off into the night in the coming winter, she knows. Naruto reaches for the soap. The water makes her eyes sting.
Brittle
The plan was simple, quick, efficient. Hound had planned for this, an event where a considered, surgical strike wasn’t possible. They just had to get in, and out, and plant remote trigger exploding tags in between. It would be messy, and awful, but it would fulfil their mission parameters, destroying the smuggling rings’ ability to produce goods - at least, in this location.
Still, encased in the shadows of the tunnels, Fox strained her senses as far as they could go. At this time of night, many of them might be sleeping - but they are shinobi, as well, and shinobi would never allow themselves to be caught unawares.
Kneeling on the rough dirt floor of the tunnel, Cat laid the first of the tags down, pressed, flat, unassuming, into the ground. Crow stood guard over him, weapon already drawn.
Four - 12 o’clock - she signed, over Cat’s head. Four guards, right ahead of them. Hound nodded and stalked forward, kunai held low against his side. She didn’t hear the blade go in, didn't hear the bodies hit the floor. Hound was efficient, silent, and deadly. But she felt their chakra blink out, all the same. It was so quick, like a candle being pinched out.
The bodies were still warm when she crept by, so warm that they might have belonged to living people, if not for the voids where their chakra used to be, the blood lapping at her feet.
Naruto knew - but could not say - that next would be one of the larger chambers, pallets stacked to the ceiling, probably quiet at this time of night. From there, several hallways led to a rabbit’s warren of laboratories, industrial equipment stacked haphazardly along corridors, evidently not made to fit into this makeshift factory.
Fox signed the all-clear, and they burst into the ante-chamber, a silent black wave. She brought her hands together in a cross-seal, the first time she had performed a jutsu in weeks. Four clones came into existence with a quiet pop, and they took exploding tags from her outstretched hands, stealing off one by one. She didn’t need to give them instructions, like she’d seen Hound do with his clones. They’re like extra limbs, responding to her will at the merest thought.
Cat and Crow took off, down two different corridors. Hound was waiting for her, by the final door, red sharingan eye glowing in the darkness.
They moved down the corridor together. Naruto recognized this hallway, the one leading to the room where the iryo-nin had made Hirohito’s medicine. Still, in the dark and quiet of the lab, she fixed an exploding tag to the underside of a table while Hound stood guard. She nearly hit her head on the table, standing up quickly.
Eight, she signed at Hound, then gestured to the hallway behind them. Shun was among them, even worse. Hound pressed a finger to the painted mouth of his mask, and pressed himself into the wall at the doorframe. Fox took the cue, and positioned herself on the other side. Had they been alerted to the break-in?
She prayed that they would pass by, not notice them. From the corner of her eye, she watched them traipse past - six men, two women, all shinobi, formidable ones, if the size of their reserves was to be judged.
It was almost instinct to let out a breath of relief as their footsteps faded into the distance. Still, Naruto controlled her breathing until Hound began to move again, loose-limbed and deliberate.
Fox followed Hound through the laboratory, weaving between equipment and delicate glassware, through to the little storage-room-cum-office that she’d spent most of her time in the afternoon prior -
Naruto’s stomach dropped. How could she have forgotten?
Hound paused in the doorway, inhaling deeply. He half-turned towards her, and a deep unease passed through her as she met his sharingan eye.
Naruto would never know what he would have done. She would never ask, afraid of what the answer might be. In the end, Hound was a loyal shinobi of Konoha, loyal, sometimes, to a fault.
But someone was coming back - Shun was coming back.
Enemy - approach - Fox signed, and they both melted into the darkness of the office, waiting with baited breath. Naruto’s clones were starting to trickle back to her, now, having planted their tags without issue.
Shun was coming to the office, she was sure of it. Hound readied a kunai, but Naruto didn’t - couldn’t, hands frozen by her sides and feet stuck to the ground.
In the darkness, she waited to die.
By someone’s hand, Shun’s, Hound’s, it would surely come for her. Naruto waited, and waited, and then it all happened at once - the clang of metal on metal, Shun parrying Hound at the very last moment.
He stumbled backwards into a table full of glassware - if the screech of metal colliding hadn’t alerted the rest of Shun’s companions to their presence, the peals of glass breaking against the floor certainly would.
“Fox!”
Hound’s snarl broke through her trance, spurred her into action.
It wasn’t a choice, not really. It was only that her body moved, blade in her hand, towards Shun. She felt naked relief when he dodged, when his chakra continued to blaze in front of her.
“Ume?”
Behind her, she heard the angry screeching of a thousand birds, and only had time to think, stupidly, what’s that sound? - before Hound was past her, holding a bolt of lightning in his hand.
“That’s not my name,” she whispered.
Naruto had never seen anything like it, and she shrank back, pressed against the wall. It was terrifying, to watch them fight. She’d only get in the way, caught between two ninja both far more powerful than she could ever be.
Then there are footsteps thundering outside - for a moment Naruto dared to hope, that it was Shisui or Tenzo, come to stop this, rescue them.
Hound said her name again, her real one.
It wasn’t until a shuriken whizzed by her and Shun - of all people - shouted “She’s just a kid!” that Naruto moved, scrambling with little grace towards the door. She hoped Hound would follow, but her path was blocked. Naruto slashed blindly, vision blurring with terror.
There was a shout, then something slammed into her, from some direction. She rolled under a table, and a second later, a body dropped with a thud next to her.
Naruto stared into a dead man’s eyes.
It lasted all of a second, her hiding place, fingers closing around her ankle and pulling her out. She rolled to avoid a blow that surely would have taken her head off, the katana lodging an inch in the tiles. Naruto kicked, wildly, and heard a crunch as her foot connected with someone’s face.
Still on the floor, on her knees and elbows, Naruto found herself staring up into Shun’s dark eyes.
Something passed across his face, then. Some glimmer of pity, sadness, something Naruto couldn’t quite comprehend. She would remember that expression for the rest of her life, dark eyes shining in the reflected glow of lightning, face taut as a bowstring. She would see it when she closed her eyes, when she slept and when she woke, in the reflection in Kakashi’s eyes when he wept and in the frightened faces of her own children when they cried out for her in the night.
Shun turned away from her, then, put her into his blind spot.
Naruto threw herself to the side as Hound and Shun began to fight once more. There were too many of them, despite the lifeless forms littering the ground around them.
Then one man caught Naruto by the shoulders, and two more with kunai in hand, aimed straight at her neck. Naruto twisted, wildly, but not enough, not in time.
The knives never reached her, her would-be murderer going limp as he was impaled on Hound’s arm. But he wasn’t quick enough to stop the second, crying out in surprise and pain as a knife slid into his chest.
Adamantine
And the world exploded in gold around her.
She didn’t have to consciously direct her chakra, didn’t weave seals or use jutsu. It was wholly instinctual, guided by the roaring of her blood in her ears and the rage crashing through her.
It was her weakness, that did this, her hesitation. Her fault - all her fault.
Her hands closed around golden chains. She didn’t yell, or cry, or shout, just surged forward - no, her feet were still planted on the ground, stance wide and bold. It was her chakra that moved, an extension of her body, her mind, her will.
The chains caught the first man, moving almost before Naruto willed it so. The chains were sharp, because she wanted them to be. It was as easy as blowing out a match, she thought, distantly recalling lighting her own gas stove back in Konoha, extinguishing the flames as easily as she ignited them.
They started to scramble away from her now, afraid. Three of them left, and Hound.
The other two were easy to catch, stumbling much as she had, a moment ago. They didn’t make it so far as a hands-length before Naruto had them, reaching, reaching.
It’s just her and Shun and Hound, bleeding on the ground. Shun didn’t try to run, and Naruto didn’t know why.
It wasn’t pretty, what her chakra did. What it wanted. They’re in pieces, these men who tried to run, who didn’t try at all. The sound it had made was terrible, tendons and muscles and organs and bones giving way. She felt it like it was her own hands rending them apart.
The chains vanished the second she had no need of them.
Naruto fell, then, like a puppet whose strings were cut. If she had been allowed to, she would have laid there and waited until the exploding tag went off or the rest of the ninja arrived to finish the job. But Hound wasn’t dead, not yet.
Naruto crawled across the floor, hands and knees slipping in blood and other things as she dragged herself to his side.
She didn’t know what to do, not really. She had to stop it bleeding, she thought. Hound tried to direct her, but she could barely hear him. Her hands slipped in the blood again, and he cried out in pain.
The room was receding around her, blood flowing faster and faster, rising up. It was six inches deep, now, eerily still, a smooth, black surface, thick and heavy.
Naruto stared into a red eye as tall as her own body.
“Kitsune,” she whispered, the word falling from her lips like a curse.
“You should show me some respect, girl.”
And oh, the Kyuubi no Kitsune wasn’t a mindless beast, or an it, but a he. A thing that could speak, a thing that could want.
“Are you going to kill me, now?”
It’s the only sensible thing she could think of to ask.
“You were the one who came here, not me. Go back to serving your precious village if you want to die so badly.”
The kyuubi didn’t want to kill her. It was a strange notion, one that she didn’t quite understand.
“How did I get here?”
“You wanted to be here, wanted the same things they all do. Power,” and the demon fox curled his lips back over his terrible teeth, each as big as a full-grown man, “But you can’t have it.”
Less than helpful - but - “Could I have it?”
What for, Naruto wasn’t sure.
“To save your pathetic dog? I think not.”
Then for what?
The answer came to her in a flash.
“Why do you heal me?”
He lashed his tails, then, and the blood rippled, washing over her, up to her chest. She was knocked off her feet by the force of it, sprawled on her side.
“My reasons are beyond your understanding, child!” He roared, and Naruto thought that he might kill her, after all.
“I think,” she whispered, the great beast bending his head down low to hear her, “That I understand it just fine. That you hurt when I hurt, and that you can give me what I need to save Hound.”
Naruto’s fingers trembled as she popped her kunai pouch open, but they were steady when she held the blade to her throat.
The whole room was glowing, bathed in red - no, Naruto was glowing the same malevolent red as a demon’s eye. She watched it flow from her hands, this power that wasn’t hers. Hound’s wound was already knitting itself back together.
Hound arched his back and screamed. It burned, no doubt, as it always did when Naruto healed - but this was different, more.
It occurred to her, then, that kitsune were, above all, tricksters, giving what you asked and never what you wanted.
“Naruto!” a voice came, not hers, not Hound’s, “What have you done?”
Crow’s silhouette filled the door, and she met red eyes once more.
In the Silence, Under the Earth
Crow had her on the ground, those red eyes better than any paralytic, any poison. She couldn’t feel anything, the world falling dead and silent around her, her body totally numb - no. She could feel her body, feel the blood soaking into her clothes, smearing against her face where it was pressed to the ground. It was her other sense, her sixth sense, that was gone.
She couldn’t tell if Hound was alive, anymore. Couldn’t feel his chakra, although he was only feet from her. Then he moved, rolling over onto his belly, struggling to pull himself up onto his elbows.
“Don’t move,” Crow said. “What happened? Fuck, don’t tell me. Is the seal intact?”
“We have to assume it’s not,” Cat’s voice came from above her. “Reinforcements will be here in a moment, we have to get out, now.”
“Fat fucking chance, after this racket.”
“Naruto - Fox -” it was Hound, “You need to use your chains - make a barrier.”
“She’s awakened the adamantine chains?”
“Doesn’t matter, I’ve suppressed her chakra,” Crow’s voice was choked with worry.
They all knew. They all knew. They all knew.
Naruto burned from the betrayal of it.
“There’s no time,” Cat snapped, and there wasn’t, not with footsteps pounding down the corridor towards them. “I’ll make the barrier, senpai, detonate the tags, now!”
The wooden dome formed over them as the earth began to shake.