It was dark.  A stillness that went on, seemingly forever.  If it weren’t for the rare seizure, Kushina would have believed herself well and truly dead.  As it stood, the silence was mind numbingly painful.

Gone were the days rising to take the day with the best of them.  To strive, to push her limits, or take on problems with her bare hands.  It took a very precious ideal to put up with that.  Pain and misery like nothing she had taken on before.

And with happiness just a few heartbeats away, it was taken away.  A home broken, and a future destroyed in a blaze that ate at her very being.  It was bittersweet, a precious hope that held the hatred at bay.

Now, losing sight of that ember, it seemed only the malice remained.  Striking in waves that only that night could match.  Thankfully, never in such abundance, but still.  Only darkness awaited her.

Days turned to months.  Months to years.  With every full moon, The dungeon heart struck a phantom blow.  The link between the jinchuuriki and the nine tailed fox surged, devouring all that was impure.

With the remnants of the catastrophe, the residual chakra of the nine tails had spread across the leaf village, and the surrounding forests.  The demons held it close, wherever found, but as the moonlight waned, they were pulled further and further into the shadows.  Reclaimed by the yin.

From the point of no return, the fate of the Jinchuriki passed over a knife’s edge and emerged intact.  The worst had come to pass, and those at greatest risk a boon revealed.  They began in earnest, a compromise reached with the Biju’s aura.

They had adapted to the challenge, but the hidden threat had yet to be fully realized.  The nature of a Jinchuriki after all, is scarcely understood.

By the end of the third year, Kushina’s ‘surroundings’ no longer faded to dark, although it wasn’t apparent until the next eclipse.  The wake of the surge resonated, stirring her thoughts and memories.

At first, Kushina had been afraid that the oppressive anger would soon overwhelm the peace between.  These memories weren’t unwelcome, however, and she used this to pull herself into lucidity.  As much as one could in a space of perpetual darkness.

It wasn’t much, but Kushina could feel a point where the red haze was thinner than others, and quickly drew on that.  A brief flicker of nostalgia swept through her before she found herself in a dimly lit ruin.  A labyrinth, with a sheet of water at the base.

She pressed a toe through the water, and all at once, a sense of being did overwhelm her.  A body of her own, apart from nothingness.  Time and reason escaped her, and her memories struggled to form a cohesive whole.  What had happened to her, and what was a dream?  Only the tunnels were real at first.

Kushina wandered the halls for many months.  Struggling to regain her sense of self, and largely failing.  There was nothing to draw on.  No sense of life, no break in the walls, no landscape, or touch of the familiar.

Only the surge of anguish influenced her there.  She refused to build out from that, but in its wake she did find instincts.

The tunnels extended endlessly, and as the waves came, new ones appeared in her mind's eye.  Like blinds pulled away, they revealed themselves from any other corridor.  Gradually, she got better at tracking them further.

Something was following her though.  As she moved throughout the quiet intervals, Kushina could occasionally hear a trill.  Brief tremors in the air, and on more than one occasion glanced about to find the source.

She didn’t catch one yet, although her perception and clarity of mind was improving.  What she wouldn’t give for a pestering fool at the time.

During one surge, she finally had enough, and rounded on the source.  Pooling her might and driving it against the wall.

It resulted in the most frightening experience she’d ever had.  Turmoil coupled with weightlessness.  A draft, profound as it was immutable, and slow.  Kushina felt her instincts seize in her chest, as aimless anguish flooded over her.

It was a struggle, to stymie the fits, and she found herself unable to do more than hold out.  The current too closely resembled nothingness, and when it released her, she fell to the ground trembling.

She would not repeat that again, but it wasn’t fruitless.  Flashes of yellow rippled across the wall, snaring out wildly and rebounding from every corner in the hall.  They slowed in time with her own heart, palpitations still snaking about albeit beneath the surface.

Kushina reached out and this time, it didn’t shy away.  Chakra throbbed along her outstretched arm.  Water dripped from the outstretched chain, dripping in golden light.  Her chains.  Sure enough, albeit strained against strong emotions, when she reached for the roots of her chakra chains, she was able to summon and manipulate the chains in a familiar way.

The effort brought dark spots to her vision, and she felt a semblance of old restraint kicking back at her.  As well as… the reason she’d resolved to do so.

The ninetails.  Chiding herself, for not recognizing it sooner.  Kushina reached out and tried to reassert her will over the rampant chakra, however she almost threw up as it was very nearly her undoing.  It wasn’t her power anymore, and trying to project like that backfired on her.  Dwarfing her presence a hundred fold, and at the same time, revealing that Kurama was out there somewhere, reacting to her.

Kushina was humbled and cautiously avoided going near the fox in her wandering.  It would be several years before her next breakthrough.