Kurama’s containment Pt 2

The sky tightened.  The ground churned beneath his feet, straining where there was naught but air, and falling away where obstacles stood.  He shook his head and attempted to disrupt the cycle, banishing doubt from his mind.  A calm before the storm, yet as a bolt of intent made it’s way to his lips, Kurama watched a black moon hurl toward the fence.

He blinked as the vision unraveled.  He wasn’t in his right mind, and he’d been used this way before.  He turned aside, but each step brought with it a gamble.  A chance that it might lend to some ulterior motive.  It was the shadow he did not control.  The illusion of movement he had not decided.

Timing was everything.  If he was ever to become free again, his chakra would have to become a weapon.  The balance between him and his standing made it swell like the tides.  To rise further, and fall deeper.  To mount with the least possible motion, and step with every ounce of his will.

Someone was going to have to pay, and Kurama would not let it end with him.  He cursed as the chakra around him was stripped, leaving him bare to the night.  It wasn’t the dark he had to fear, so he spared the change with little more than a glare.  Hatred slain by the desire to see another sunrise.  He indulged in a moment of silence.  A sliver shone bright, brighter than anything else, and he seized it.  Physically calling all of his might to rally to it.

Whatever it was, it could not take as much as the transcendent’s eye.  It would be the flame that undermined that authority.

His claw jammed, and - as he was reminded that his focus was not perfect - he saw something unexpected.

The naked air shimmered like glass.  A pane stopping his movement shy of a babe.  Chains leapt and writhed against the underside of the barrier.  One large enough trap his limbs against the forest floor.

Shackles.  His flesh split in two, repelled from either side, desperately fighting for some sense of connection.  Held so fast, bones would snap, and yet slick as ice.  One reluctant moment was all it took, then his foreleg slid across the surface.  His claw raking through the earth.

Pressure build in those bone as his weight shifted, Twisting and warping them until he was sure something had to give.

“Release!”

The pane snapped, and like an arrow from a bowstring, his paws flew out from under him.  Seismic force replacing the bondage in a way Kurama couldn’t control for all his years.  His paws dug in deeper.  Impulse carving shapes into the grounds as he made to break his fall.

It was the threat posed by a single man that roused him.  In the same heartbeat he struck the earth, Kurama switched his stance and kicked off the ground.  His hind legs soaring through the air, sending spiderweb cracks out as they landed.  The earth where the culprit stood was barely sound.

Orochimaru.  The snake sannin, a jealous prodigy and ambitious student of the God of shinobi.  Once a political assassin in the third shinobi war, he had mastered hundreds of forbidden and mythical techniques.

“Damn it Jiraya.  Sage chakra doesn’t suit me.” His hands came together, and Kurama could feel the atmosphere change around the sannin.

He had all of a moment to wonder before a disk of rock and metal slammed into his gut.  Kurama yipped in surprise, blinded by the shock.  The rashomon gate drove the wind from his lungs, and peppered him with blows as it repelled him.

Catching his wits, Kurama twisted midair and wrent the gate to pieces.  The sannin cast in the glow of his mind’s eye.  You damn human.

That’s what I’m here for.Orochimaru raised an arm, and spires of stone slammed into Kurama’s underbelly.  Twice in as much airtime, Kurama gawked at his audacity.  Plowing through the spikes without effort, and shifting to upright.

Crimson eyes glared through the broken roots like a stalking cat.  Orochimaru jumped clear as clawed arms scalped the forest, Drawing back as Kurama rushed him with an open maw.

It was gonna be a feat to escape from that position, but before that came to pass, a jade stake fell from the heavens.  Half as large as Kurama’s arm, it struck him like a brick.  A pained cry as he rolled away from the fallen projectile.

Blinking away at the stars, Kurama looked up to see who had hit him.  His heart shivered at the sight.  The full moon shone crimson.  A cloud of dust and black smoke haloed a girl with eyes red as his own.  Orbiting around her were nine orbs. Trailing smoke.

She descended toward the forest, shifting the hue of the moon blue for a second.

“Having trouble there Orochimaru?”

“Kurenai.  How bold of you to interfere.”

She narrowed her eyes, and then turned her gaze to the fox.  Jade lances forming from the mist, “I didn’t come here to play games old man.  How much chakra do you have left?”

“Enough.” Orochimaru’s smirk lost some of its depth, shifting closer to nostalgia.

“Mhmm.  Keep it that way.  The fourth will have our heads if this beast stays around for a second push.”

“Let’s not waste time then.”

Kuranai raised her brow as Orochimaru knelt.  A seal unfolding in the cover of the forest.  With no line of sight so far as the sky immediately overhead, he had guts if not confidence.

Kurama stalked cautiously.  On one hand, the two were dangerous.  On the other, his vision faded in and out.  It was better.  A fourth for the time, what he saw was more consistent than not, but his senses were still bending over backwards as often.  Better to fight the enemy that you know than walk blindly into havens that you don’t.

Of course, neither came high on his list of options.  Burning out the genjutsu had worked well enough so far.  So long as he stayed out of reach of Madara’s sharingan-

Red eyes rose mere meters in front of his face.

Kurama flinched, blinked tears of frustration, and bellowed.  A heart wrenching scream.  The air around Kurenai rippled.  Vibrations so dense they brought heat shimmers with them.  A needle struck his front paw.  Three more struck his forearm.  By the time he registered what they were, several shells had slammed into his abdomen, and he was rolling through the air.

Kurama flinched, using his tails to break his fall, or better yet, keep him upright.  He rounded on the girl.  For a split second he saw her raise a knife hand.  One of his tails vanished behind her.  Severed on approach.  The others were less enthused to strike her directly, and when Kurama looked again, he had all of them accounted for.

“You-”

“Can’t take a hint then?”

Those orbs.  She mimed an uppercut, and a massive blow rolled his head to the side.  Kurama became distantly aware that rather than receiving a follow up, he had been pushed back.  Again, bracing against the ground, and drawing his hind legs beneath him, Kurama prepared to charge.

He caught a glimpse of a jade bolt.  He had time enough to breathe, before it caught him in the chest.  It stung.  Ribs sprained as Kurenai flew toward him.  He was rolling back again.  Enough to keep him from launching, but not enough to stop him from attacking altogether.  Drawing his arms together, he seriously considered rinsing her with a bijudama.

As though sensing the thought, the girl swerved off to the left.  A series of stars forming out of the dust in her wake.  Kurama tensed, rounding to intercept her.  His paw caught on several of the crystals, reducing them to dust.  He wasn’t quick enough to catch her, but in the corner of his mind's eye, he saw the second ninja.

Faded in concentration and resolved intent, it no less stood out as one of the few creatures remaining in the open.  That and the oily feel of his presence.  The sannin bowed his head, and suddenly there was smoke rising from the forest.  A much larger snake flopped into the treeline, animating the horizon with a winding river of scales.

Kurama reared back, but slammed his head and shoulders into a barrier.

He looked back to see a glassy barrier.  No doubt the work of the airborne human.  As if to punctuate that, a barrage of pinprick blows sailed into his spine.  To his surprise, gaining momentum as they churned his chakra about.  Kurama turned to widen his stance, but the barrier plowed onward.  Eating up whatever range he used to do so.

He turned his head to find the serpent closing in.  The Sannin riding on its head.  Caught between a rock and a hard place, Kurama reoriented to us the barrier as a springboard.  The serpent rolled out to the side, opening the forest floor along it’s length.  By the time Kurama saw this it was too late.

Further and further he was pushed.  Step after step, he was cut off from any breathing room to escape.  No, they couldn’t.  A single human would never measure up to a biju.  The girl would be straining to sustain such a large barrier herself.  Kurama pulled his head away, allowing himself to fall back, and directed his maw toward the genin.

Kurenai's eyes widened as blue and red orbs merged.  The truth seeking orbs hammering him sank into the orb, disrupting, but not preventing the amassing of power.

Kurama bit wasted no time, biting down on the orb and spewing it over the space in front of it.  The barrier heaved and vanished, like a shield torn free of its wielder.  Using the dregs of that power, Kurama rode the blast out and to the side, towering over the snake.

However, the snake was already poised to strike.  Raw as the Bijudama had been, the truth seeking orbs were undamaged.  The latter chipped his jaw, while the former launched itself into him.  Kurama tumbled back, and as the first of the trees began to crack he saw a babe.  A blond haired blue eyed boy with whisker marks on his cheeks.

You again?

Chains erupted from the boy, cocooning the cradle around him.  An echo of Kurama’s own chakra flaring from them.

But that’s-  where?

A shout rang in his ears.

“Adamantine sealing: Compounding stone shells.”

A barrier centered on the boy grazed him.  Another about the clearing gripped a chunk of his body.  Yet another split kurama in half.  A fourth layer of glass coated the world around him.

By that point he felt it start to pull.

“What is this…”

Orochimaru grunted as Kurenai fell into his arms.  Her presence was unstable enough to be dangerous, even as she averted the chakra that held her aloft.  A glossy shell revealing the nebulae that dwelled within her.

He planted both feet on the  tree branch, shifting his weight several times to ensure they would not be brought down, then turned to the fox.  A cascade of chakra converging on the fruit of Kushina.  “We need to finish this quickly.”

Kurenai nodded weakly, releasing several gems from a pouch in her sleeve, “These will do.  Use them with care.”

Orochimaru sighed, Sage chakra coloring his brow, “Here I’d hope you would handle this part.”

Kurenai glared, “What part of quickly is doing on my own what my allies will do faster?  Jackass.”

Orochimaru brought them to the ground.  Gathering the majority of the stones without further protest.  Eying the half dozen she held, Kurenai marched into the pyre of aggrieved chakra.

Sickenning.  That was the biggest impression left by the hurricane of chakra melding with the Fourth Hokage’s offspring.  Toxic.  Burning.  Overwhelming.  Suffocating.  It was profound to find that sage chakra, let alone the basic affinities, persisted in such a space.  Tracking them down had been the single most intensive exercise in chakra control he’d ever committed to.  Fortunately the majority of the danger was handled by the boy, the seal, and the barrier that confined the fox.  Even then, it left him with something along the lines of severe sunburn.

Piece by piece, they sealed off portions of the fox’s chakra, allowing what remained to merge with the boy and the seal on his navel without complication.

Surprisingly when the innermost circle of chakra cleared, Kurenai was sitting there with him. The outer and second ring had roasted his flesh.  With each layer of the barrier becoming exponentially more energy dense.