I scrubbed water from my hair as I stepped out of the bathroom. My morning shower had done its job—though my left arm still tingled and hung heavy at my side, half-asleep from where my bedmate had pressed into it all night.
I scanned the apartment as I walked into the living area. It was beginning to look like the nook of an aspiring wizard: scrolls lined the walls, covered in fuinjutsu patterns and chakra calculus, each one a step toward the elusive goal of sealing seals within themselves. Kinoe's scroll on recursive array logic—his final gift before leaving—sat unopened on my desk. It promised answers.
Answers I would have.
The Wizard Drip wouldn't enchant itself.
The new addition to my home caught my eye: potted plants lined the windowsill. Ingredients for a future project. One that would remain future-bound until my fuinjutsu caught up with my ambition.
The familiar clatter of metal on ceramic echoed from the kitchen. Naruko was making breakfast.
Ramen. Of course. The only thing she could "cook."
She'd spent the night.
No—not like that, you degenerates. We're eleven. After training with Kinoe last night, she just… showed up at my doorstep and called it a sleepover. I didn't question it. If she clung to me in the night like I would disappear at any moment —well, no one saw it, so it didn't happen.
Now she was dancing barefoot in the kitchen, twirling as she stirred noodles in a pot. Her long, golden hair shimmered in the morning light, her eyes—vivid blue with a faint, almost imperceptible violet undertone—sparkled with mischief. She looked almost too adorable in her oversized sleep shirt.
She was also a horrible dancer—no rhythm at all. The cuteness was overflowing.
Truly, the burdens I bear for my friends. Sharing beds, having cute girls cook me breakfast. My suffering grows every day.
I crept up behind her and wrapped my arms around her shoulders. "Morning, Naruko," I whispered to her ear.
She stiffened. Her ears turned red. Then, slowly, she leaned back into me and hugged me tight.
I was furious—truly furious—at the world that had left her so starved for affection. But I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy how touchy feely she was.
"Morning," she turned around and mumbled into my shirt.
Soon the ramen was cooked and surprisingly good.
We sat together, quietly eating. I told her I planned to use the spare time before class for fuinjutsu practice. To my surprise, she asked to join me. Naruko voluntarily choosing extra "schoolwork"?
…she probably just didn't want to be alone.
I unrolled the scroll Kinoe had given me and scanned its contents.
It detailed chakra containment seals—an indirect, but promising, solution to my current problem. Fuinjutsu wasn't just about ink drawn into intricate patterns that twisted reality. The ink was merely a medium. The real magic came from shaping chakra itself.
The key to embedding seals within other seals wasn't some secret technique—it was learning to store chakra inside a seal. That, however, demanded an absurd level of chakra control.
Far more than I currently possess.
I was still wrapping my head around that revelation when a cough broke my concentration. I looked over to find Naruto looking guiltily away from my open tool kit.
I sighed, already bracing for whatever chaos she'd wrought. I walked over—and promptly froze.
There, sprawled across one of my spare scrolls, was what had to be the most deranged, borderline criminal storage seal I'd ever seen.
Curious despite myself, I placed my empty bowl on the scroll and sent a pulse of chakra through it.
The bowl vanished.
Another pulse—and it popped back into existence, still warm.
It worked. Somehow.
But it shouldn't have.
The seal was a disaster—dozens of symbols had no known function, many contradicted each other, and yet they were… stabilizing? Enhancing? It made no logical sense. It was like a jazz band composed entirely of drummers somehow playing a symphony.
"How did you even come up with this?" I asked, baffled.
Naruko beamed. "It just made sense." she said, scratching her head awkwardly.
"This makes no sense. Literally."
"Maybe I'm just that great."
I squinted at the scroll. "Maybe… but I smell sorcery."
"Huh?"
"Kekkei genkai," I said. "You might have one."
Her eyes lit up. "Really?!"
"Possibly. I don't have a way to confirm it yet."
"What about that connection thing you did with Hinata? When we were training?"
I blinked. "That… might work."
"Then do it!"
And that was how I found myself sitting cross-legged beside her, threading a sliver of Yin chakra toward her consciousness, forming a bridge between minds.
I only remembered the complication of her passenger as the connection clicked into place.
— ❖ Scene Break ❖ —
The floor beneath my feet shimmered with condensation—water yet not. This wasn't a place of clear thoughts. It was impressions, sensations.
The solidity of this realm was more a result of what it contained than its container's mental health.
Naruko's mindscape was cold. Fragmented. Bleeding from wounds that had never scabbed, let alone healed.
I had known pain. But this? This was something else.
Loneliness, crushing in its isolation.
I walked across the fetid water, carefully threading between pipe-choked channels and unstable memories, not really knowing where I was going, until I reached it: the Gate.
Steel bars, as wide as trees and high as towers, jutted from the floor and ceiling. A lock sat at its center. A single tag fluttered across it. Light spilled over the cavern like a theater spotlight.
I stepped into it—and the world shifted.
Do you know what it is to hate something?
To truly hate it?
To endure centuries of torment, just to make that thing suffer in return?
To lose everything—and become nothing—but that hate?
And then—
To be the object of that hatred.
The chakra that assaulted me felt solid—tangible. It was a weight, a pressure pressing down on the soul.
The air shimmered. The water boiled.
A presence emerged.
The Nine-Tails.
Massive. Ancient. Terrifying. It filled the cavern like a living apocalypse. Blood-red eyes bore down on me, thick with contempt.
It hated me.
With the intensity of a thousand suns.
A hatred that burned across my senses like acid.
And all I could say was—
"Fascinating," I whispered, absolutely baffled at how a creature like this functioned. Was it purely metaphysical? It had to be to an extent. that didn't exclude the possibility of it possessing mundane traits.
My eyes scrutinised the great beast before me, the curiosity burning in my heart trumping the fear that raced through my veins.
"You're a bold one," it growled. Its voice was the rumble of the earth shifting beneath continents.
"Kyuubi-san," I greeted politely.
"You are not my jailer," it snapped. Prowling behind the bars of its prison. Tails swishing back and forth. The distance between us was massive, just as a result of its mountainous size, yet it heard me perfectly. I don't know if that was a result of the location of our meeting or just a facette of its power.
I wanted to know though, I wanted to know quite badly.
"That's obvious," I replied. Taking in the strangely human shape to his torso—he sounded male—and his…. Hands? He had hands?
"You come to gawk at the beast in the cage?" I blinked at his growled astonishment.
"No," I said. "I actually came here by mistake."
Its eyes narrowed. His gaze making it clear he was questioning my sanity.
I ignored that, I had questions.
"You hate me," I continued. "You seem to hate everything so That's not surprising. But I'm curious… who do you hate most?"
It glared. "What do you know of hate, boy?"
"Nothing. Not compared to you."
It rumbled in place, settling low, head in on his paws to look at me. I pressed on.
"Everyone says you're pure evil. But I find that hard to believe. Not from here. You don't feel evil." I said letting my chakra sense really process what the kyuubi felt like, it was painful but I soldiered through it "You feel… wounded."
It blinked, as if taken off guard, watching me even closer.
"…Madara Uchiha," it finally growled. "I have met many disgraceful creatures among your kind, all destructively hypocritical in their own fashion, yet none have ever surpassed the 'ghost'." his tone became mocking. "of the uchiha in his ability to delude himself."
He smiled then, not a kind one but a vicious and angry thing dripping with venom.
"All of you humans are trash but he… he was in a category by himself."
Madara.
I felt something twist in my gut. The hatred in that name… it was nuclear. Tectonic. It made all the malice he had putting out up until that point feel tame.
"You hate him more than your sealers?" I asked.
The silence was enough confirmation.
Something about that was off. If memory serves, lord hashirama imprisoned him so why not hate him more?
A suspicion formed, reinforced by my recent experiences with how powerful the uchiha bloodline was.
"Did the Sharingan… do something to you?"
A pregnant pause, then violent action.
The cavern trembled with a guttural, earth-shaking growl as the Kyūbi hurled itself against the bars of its prison. Massive claws raked through the gaps, swiping at me—too close. I stumbled back, heart hammering, just out of reach.
But it wasn't the strike that froze me.
It was the flicker in its eyes—an unspoken truth more eloquent than any words.
The Kyūbi loathed Madara with such searing intensity it seemed to warp the very air.
One moment, I'd been speaking with a cold, intelligent force. The next, that presence was gone—consumed by a beast of pure rage. The cunning malice had given way to raw, volcanic wrath.
The hate wasn't just fire. It was lava: molten, corrosive, and consuming.
I stood frozen, breath caught in my lungs, overwhelmed not only by the fury before me but by the sorrow that seethed beneath it. It was a vast, aching pain—bone-deep and soul-rotted. Desperation, distilled by centuries of imprisonment and betrayal, had long since curdled into a bottomless desire for vengeance.
It didn't just want to kill—it wanted the world to suffer. To hurt the way it hurt.
And against every instinct, every warning screaming in my head, my heart broke for it.
I reached out without thinking—my chakra brushing against its own, a silent offer to soothe, to understand.
But before my spirit could be crushed beneath the weight of that endless, festering agony, I was wrenched free—pulled from Naruko's mindscape like a drowning man from the depths.
My eyes snapped open. Sarutobi Hiruzen stood before me, his weathered face lined with worry, his hand still extended from where he'd broken the connection.
"Izuku-kun," he said, voice thick with both relief and grim resolve. "It seems we'll have to have this talk sooner than I'd hoped."