…
Murakami exhaled slowly through his nose and leaned back on his hands. For a while, neither of them said anything.
He looked down at his tea, then back at Mito.
"I'm not even a registered shinobi anymore," he muttered. "I sell things. I run a business. I manage a school. What part of that makes me qualified to deal with a jinchūriki?"
"That is precisely why I think you're suitable." Mito said with a smile.
Murakami just stared at her, of course she had an answer. Knowing Mito, she had probably considered every objection before he had even voiced it.
He waited for her to continue and Mito's expression softened slightly. "You're not caught in the current."
Murakami raised an eyebrow.
"You've built your life outside the usual flow of the shinobi world," she continued. "You watch it, you understand it, but you don't allow it to carry you wherever it wants."
He said nothing.
"You have your own work, your own responsibilities, and your own people. You aren't chasing rank or recognition. You don't need the village to tell you who you are."
Murakami wanted to protest. Unfortunately, he couldn't think of anything convincing.
He scratched the side of his nose and sighed. "That sounds suspiciously like a compliment."
"It is."
"That makes it worse."
Mito laughed softly.
"But you're forgetting something else," Murakami said after a moment. "This isn't a private favor you're asking of me. If people find out, and they will eventually, Hiruzen, Danzo, the council... they're not exactly going to welcome the idea."
"I know."
"They may not even allow it."
Mito picked up her teacup. "I'm not asking them."
Murakami remained silent.
She took a slow sip, completely unbothered. "The council has its responsibilities. So does the Hokage. But neither of them decides everything that concerns me."
There was something different in her tone. It wasn't anger or defiance, it was certainty.
Murakami watched her carefully.
Mito set her cup down. "I am the wife of the First Hokage," she said quietly. "I have carried the Nine-Tails within me for decades. I have lived with a power that most people in this village could never hope to control, let alone understand."
Her gaze settled on him.
"The village knows my position. Hiruzen knows it. The council knows it. They may disagree with my decisions, but they also understand the consequences of trying to force my hand."
Murakami remained silent.
Mito's chakra stirred.
It wasn't an outburst or an attempt to intimidate him. Her chakra simply became more noticeable, steady, vast and unmistakably powerful.
For a moment, Murakami understood exactly why even people who had known Mito for years treated her with a certain degree of caution.
"They don't command me," she said. "They work around me."
Murakami's eyes narrowed slightly. That was the first time he'd heard her put it so plainly. There was no arrogance in her voice. She wasn't boasting about her position. She simply knew where she stood.
"Do they know you're planning this?" he asked.
"Hiruzen suspects."
"And he won't object?"
"He may have concerns." Mito's expression softened slightly. "But he understands what is at stake."
Murakami nodded slowly. "And Danzo?"
Her expression became faintly displeased. "Danzo is more complicated."
"I expected as much."
"He dislikes anything he cannot control."
"That sounds like him."
Mito gave him a sideways glance. "He also knows better than to confront me openly."
Murakami considered that for a moment. "And if he decides to work around you?"
"He may try." There was a small pause. "Then I'll deal with it when he does."
The simplicity of the answer was almost more unsettling than a threat would have been.
Murakami leaned forward, resting his forearms against his knees.
"So what happens now? You intend to keep Kushina with the Uzumaki and prepare her for the transfer when the time comes?"
Mito nodded.
"She will be raised among her own people. She'll have a family, a clan, and a life of her own before any of that becomes necessary."
"And me?" Murakami asked. "Where and when do I come in?"
"You'll be there when you can."
Murakami frowned slightly. "That's vague."
"It's supposed to be."
She smiled. "I don't want you hovering over a child for the next several years as though she's already a jinchūriki. Kushina deserves to grow up before the burden is placed upon her."
That made sense. More than he'd expected.
"But eventually," Mito continued, "the Nine-Tails will have to be transferred."
Murakami's expression became serious.
"There is no perfect time for something like that. There is only the time when it becomes necessary." she added.
He sighed and looked away, rubbing his thumb slowly against the side of his teacup. "I'll need time."
"You'll have it."
"How much?" he looked up and met her gaze.
Mito considered the question. "Eight years at the very least. Perhaps a little longer."
Murakami's eyes narrowed.
Eight years.
Perhaps ten.
Enough time for Kushina to grow old enough to understand what was being asked of her.
Enough time for him to prepare himself as well.
"Resources," he said. "Discretion. And I don't want the council interfering with whatever relationship develops between us."
Mito nodded. "I'll arrange what I can."
Murakami exhaled slowly. "So I really am back in the game."
Mito smiled. "You were never out, Murakami."
He looked at her.
"You simply convinced yourself that you were."
Murakami glanced down at his tea, it had gone cold but he took a sip anyway.
She wasn't wrong. Matters of the Shinobi world wasn't so simple that one can just decide to be done with it. Even if that decision is made personally, one still had to ask if the world was willing to agree to that.
Still, there was one thing he needed to understand before he went any further.
Murakami looked up. "Can I see it?"
Mito's brow furrowed. "See what?"
"The Nine-Tails."
The room went quiet.
Murakami shrugged slightly. "Not all of it. I don't particularly want to lose my life over curiosity. But I'd like to understand what I'm dealing with."
Mito studied him for a while. "You want to see Kurama?"
"Kurama?"
Mito nodded. "That's the Nine-Tails' name."
"Oh." Murakami already knew that, but he couldn't act like he did, so he nodded and continued. "I think that would be useful."
"Useful?"
"At the very least, I'd prefer my first impression of the Nine-Tails to come from the actual Nine-Tails itself rather than from others word of mouth."
Mito's lips curved faintly. "Fair enough."
Murakami smiled calmly, internally, however, he was considerably less calm.
He had spent years preparing for dangerous shinobi with forbidden techniques, powerful clans with their bloodline techniques and the countless ways this world could kill him.
None of that had prepared him for voluntarily asking to meet the creature whose presence alone could change the landscape.
His common sense was strongly opposed to the idea but his curiosity had already won.
"I understand," Mito said. "Then come."
As soon as the invitation fell, Murakami felt a subtle shift in her chakra and the next moment, the world changed.
One breath, he was sitting in Mito's room, the next, he was standing somewhere else.
He hadn't felt himself being moved. There was no dizziness or sensation of travel. The surroundings had simply changed.
The sky was red.
The ground beneath his feet was dark and smooth, marked with Uzumaki patterns that seemed to disappear into the distance. The air was unnaturally still.
Murakami looked around slowly. "…What the hell?"
"Don't be alarmed," Mito said behind him. "You asked to see the beast. I'm showing you."
He turned.
Mito stood a few steps away, perfectly composed.
"You brought me into your mindscape."
"Yes."
Murakami looked around again. It wasn't what he had expected.
He had imagined something closer to the dark, enclosed space he remembered about Naruto's from the anime. Instead, Mito's inner world was vast and strangely orderly.
Like a dimension with its own laws.
Surrounding him was an endless expanse, filled with a strange reddish glow. Ahead, an enormous red sphere hung in the distance like a sun made of molten magma. Its surface churned and bubbled continuously, casting an eerie crimson light across the surroundings.
Kurama was bound against it by thick golden chains, the familiar Uzumaki markings running along their length. Several chains wrapped tightly around its body while others restrained its massive tails, holding the beast firmly against the blazing sphere.
Even from a distance, Murakami could feel the immense chakra radiating from it.
It was dense and suffocating.
Just as he was admiring the view, Kurama's eyes opened.
Red, slitted and vast.
And as soon as he made eye contact, the world seemed to break as killing intent slammed into him like a tidal wave, primal to its core.
Fear seized his body before his mind could respond. His legs locked, his spine stiffened, even his heart forgot its rhythm.
For a single, terrifying second, Murakami felt what it was like to be prey.
He couldn't move, blink or even think. There was only that presence; rage incarnate, forged in suffering, steeped in blood.
The Kyūbi didn't growl. It didn't roar. It simply stared, and in doing so, pressed against every boundary of what Murakami could endure.
Every instinct in him screamed to move, but his body refused to cooperate.
This wasn't ordinary killing intent.
His eyes were bloodshot as his knees began to buckle under the pressure. At that moment, Murakami felt first hand what it meant to be so close to death.
But before the suppression overwhelmed him, something within him responded.
His spiritual awareness surged outward causing the red world around him to shudder slightly.
The pressure didn't disappear but it was pushed back as a thin layer of dark water spread beneath his feet and spread outward.
The shallow surface expanded rapidly, covering the ground around him until the landscape was swallowed beneath dark, still water.
The sky changed next. The red darkness cracked apart like a veil being torn away as stars appeared.
One by one, then hundreds of them, filling the sky with cold points of light.
And then the moon emerged.
It rose silently above the horizon, enormous and impossibly clear, its silver light spreading across the water until the entire surface reflected it.
The area he stood in Mito's mindscape was gradually replaced by Murakami's mindscape.
Water beneath his feet and the Moon above him dominating the sky.
His spiritual presence settled into the space.
Kurama's killing intent struck against it again and the water around Murakami exploded outward in a ring as the moonlight intensified to counter it.
The ripples raced across the entire surface until the pressure that had nearly forced him to his knees began to lose its hold.
Murakami's knees stopped halfway to the ground.
He took a breath as his mind cleared. The pressure hadn't disappeared but he could withstand it now.
Mito's eyes narrowed slightly. She hadn't expected that. She was ready to pull Murakami away the moment he lost consciousness.
Having spent so much time with Murakami, she knew exactly how spiritually sensitive he was so she wasn't afraid this would break him, however, she didn't also expect him to be this resilient.
She watched as Murakami straightened slowly.
His own spiritual presence continued to spread around him, forming a boundary between himself and the Nine-Tails.
For several seconds, neither moved.
Kurama's eyes remained fixed on him and Murakami stared back.
He could feel the beast's emotions clearly now.
Rage.
Pain.
Humiliation.
Loneliness.
Not as thoughts, but as impressions carried through its chakra.
There was so much of it that distinguishing one emotion from another was almost impossible.
Murakami swallowed. "So this is the Nine-Tails."
Mito nodded. "The Nine-Tailed Fox."
Murakami's gaze remained on the enormous beast. "No story really explains what it feels like to stand this close."
Mito said nothing because there was nothing to be said. Not many who encountered a Tailed beast lived to tell the tale, and those who did, only told the tale from their perspective.
The Nine-Tails shifted slightly, and the movement alone caused the surrounding energy to tremble, despite its body and tails being bound against the red, magma-like sun by Mito's golden chains.
Murakami's eyes narrowed. "How does a child live with this?"
Mito's expression became solemn. "She doesn't do it alone."
Murakami looked at her. "That's why you asked me to be there for her?"
"Yes."
Another wave of pressure rolled outward.
Murakami's mindscape reacted immediately, the moonlight around him intensified as his spiritual awareness pushed back against the pressure.
Kurama's enormous eyes narrowed. For the first time, there was something besides hatred in its gaze.
Interest.
Murakami took a cautious step forward. His legs were still tense, but they held as he looked up at the enormous fox. "Nice to meet you."
The Nine-Tails stared at him then a deep growl rolled through the space.
Murakami's expression remained flat. "…I'll take that as a warning."
Mito's lips curved faintly as the pressure slowly receded and the red world began to fade.
As Murakami's awareness returned to reality, one thought remained with him.
Kushina wasn't simply going to carry the Nine-Tails, she was going to have to live with something like this inside her.
That changed the meaning of Mito's request considerably.
…..
…First Meeting with Kurama.
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