61

CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE:

Sansa opened her eyes and found herself standing in an empty, white space that stretched as far as her eyes could see. Considering the torture that Danzo had subjected her to in what she referred to mentally as 'the white-room', she would have thought that the endless expanse of white around her would trigger panic.

It didn't.

Instead, Sansa felt oddly calm and almost disconnected from her emotions as her surroundings shifted and blurred, until she could see the familiar form of her twin flickering in and out of focus, like a reflection in the rippling water of a pond.

"Interesting," a familiar voice rumbled, and Sansa smiled as she felt more than witnessed the Yin-self of Kurama standing at her back, forever her watchful guardian.

The Yang-self of Kurama's being took longer to ripple into existence in the strange white plane. Sansa put it down to the currently weaker connection between Naruto and Yang-Kurama, their souls not as closely entwined as hers was with Yin-Kurama. Naruto appeared more solid now, as if Yang-Kurama's presence had strengthened his own in the liminal space.

"How is this possible?" Yang-Kurama growled, all burning eyes of hate and bared fangs, the aggression that had once been so familiar now entirely foreign to Sansa after all this time. Naruto appeared entirely unfazed by Yang-Kurama's reaction, which didn't surprise her considering what he'd shared about his efforts to communicate with them so far.

In the end, it was neither Sansa or her brother who answered Yang-Kurama; instead, it was Yin-Kurama who spoke up. "It is through ninshū that we have made this possible," they said, stepping out from where they had loomed behind Sansa in what had once been a threat yet now brought her a sense of safety and security, the reassuring presence of the protector in her soul. Slowly, Yin-Kurama started to close the distance between the two halves of themself. Sansa wondered if it was just in her mind that Yin-Kurama seemed stronger, brighter than their Yang-self.

"What do these apes know of ninshū?" Sneered Yang-Kurama, lips pulled back from jagged, dagger-like fangs. "Even Kushina forgot the practices of her own people, forgot how to use her chakra as anything but a weapon, and then she stole mine to do the same!"

"Kushina may have forgotten," Yin-Kurama agreed, a growl of their own in their voice at the memory, "and Konoha, a village built on lies and corpses, has never known ninshū since the days of its founding. None have been worthy of the chakra their ancestors were gifted– not until now."

"Gifted!" Scoffed Yang-Kurama, and there was a terrible rage in their voice. "Their ancestors were not gifted with chakra, they stole it!"

Sansa blinked, startled. She had assumed the people in this world had always been born with chakra. To learn that it had once been otherwise was curious to her– especially as Yin-Kurama had never brought it up before, even when they had been discussing chakra with Sansa and Mito. Yet, perhaps that was why Kurama had not raised the matter– after all, it did beg the question, if chakra was stolen then there must have been someone or something that it had been stolen from.

"These sacrifices are fruit of the poison tree," Yang-Kurama continued to rage. "They are the spawn of thieves and warmongers–"

"–and by all right and reason, we should hate them and everything that they stand for," Yin-Kurama agreed. "And yet, you are overlooking what is obvious."

"Just what is it I am overlooking?" Demanded Yang-Kurama uneasily, and Yin-Kurama smiled, a terrifying, cruel, vulpine smile.

"That given enough time, humanity will always find a way to destroy itself before it ever learns from its history," Yin-Kurama purred, no uncertainty in their voice. "The thieves and warmongers of Konoha fear our power and might, they always have, and for their cowardice and fear we have been chained for nearly a century.

"But we existed for centuries before these Hidden Villages, and we will exist for centuries after they are bones and ruins, watching as history repeats itself over and over. We watch now as our jailers are abused and used by those greedy for power they fear yet believe they can control, just as it has been since the very first of us. And just as the very first of us did, just as so many have done, we will watch as the weapons those thieves and warmongers hungered to use for their own gain turn against their abusers and burn everything to the ground."

Sansa could feel the impact of Yin-Kurama's words resonating within her, even if they had not been directed her way. Yang-Kurama looked considering as they absorbed their otherself's words, glancing down at Naruto as if seeing Sansa's brother for the first time. Sansa forced herself to push down all the questions she had– the first of them?– to instead focus on how Yin-Kurama's speech seemed to be reaching their other-self.

"The first time I spoke to my jailer," Yin-Kurama continued, taking the final few steps to close the gap between themself and Yang-Kurama and look deep into the burning gold eyes of their other-self, "she addressed me with respect. She entreated upon me to flare my chakra to call attention and summon aid for her injured brother, yet she did not demand I do this without compensation, as every sacrifice before her has; I think it did not even occur to her, that she should force me, that she should use me against my will.

"She offered a trade for the boon of my assistance, apologising as she did so for how little she had to offer me in return. I told her my price was my freedom, of course. I expected her to refuse, to bargain, or to discard false niceties to use me against my will. I was wrong; she did not hesitate a moment to agree, to bind herself in oath. Her exact words, I recall, were along the lines of 'I thought you were going to ask for something difficult'.

"When I later told her of our siblings, of how they are chained and bound as we are, she shed true tears for our suffering, and then vowed she would do whatever was in her power to see not just myself, but all of us free."

"And you believed her?" Yang-Kurama asked incredulously.

"She has given me no reason to doubt her," Yin-Kurama said firmly. "She has dedicated herself to learning the art of sealing, she created a seal for the rebels of Kirigakure to use to free Isobu– and only to free our sister, not to bind her back in chains– and she has honestly informed me that with her current skill, she could destroy the seal binding us, though the cost would be her life. It was I who told her to continue studying the art of sealing until she is able to free us without dying herself. She agreed, however vowed that if she were in danger of imminent death, she would break the seal to grant my freedom instead of allowing me to discorporate with her."

"How?" Yang-Kurama asked, and there was something terribly vulnerable in their voice, in the agitated way their nine glorious tails jerked wildly about behind them as they stared, wide-eyed, at their Yin-self. "How can you trust them?"

Yin-Kurama's answer was simple. "Faith," they said, then leaned forward to press the side of their muzzle against their other-self's. 

Sansa watched with wide eyes as Yin- and Yang-Kurama's chakra flared between and around them, visible and golden, as bright and brilliant as the rays of the sun reflecting off still ocean waters. There was no hatred or anger in this chakra; instead, there was something unnameable, something strong and steady and solid– something that felt a little like faith. And as their chakra crowned them with beautiful, brilliant gold, Kurama's two selves seemed to blur together, appearing as one.

"Wow," whispered Naruto, speaking up for the first time since Yin- and Yang-Kurama had started talking. He was blinking rapidly, just as she was, appearing just as unable as Sansa was to look away from the glorious sight, no matter the glaring brightness of it.

After what seemed to be a small eternity, each of Kurama's selves took a deliberate step back, the golden chakra darkening to the more familiar, burning red before flickering out of sight.

"I understand now," Yang-Kurama said, tilting their head as they looked down at Sansa, considering. "Little Vixen," they said, speaking slowly as if testing how the words fit in their mouth. "You're going to lose."

"What is it you believe I will lose, your grace?" Sansa asked politely; for all that Kurama's two selves appeared to have shared memories, for as long they continued to exist as two separate selves she would not make any foolish or impolite assumptions of familiarity.

Yang-Kurama bared their teeth in what was almost a smile. "I will not be declaring my love for the whelp anytime soon– which means you will owe me a gold dragon."

It took Sansa a moment to remember the conversation between herself and Yin-Kurama where she had playfully bet a gold dragon that their other-self would not be able to help but love Naruto.

"I'm afraid it is you who will lose," she disagreed, smiling up at them. Her smile seemed to take them aback.

"Aneue is always right," Naruto confirmed, before pausing. "Wait, whelp? Do you mean me?" His face brightened into a wide, beaming smile. "That's gotta be the nicest name you've ever called me– I knew I'd start growing on you!"

"Like flesh-eating bacteria," Yang-Kurama snarled back at her brother, as if on reflex.

"So you're saying we have a symbiotic relationship!" Naruto gasped, continuing to beam up at Yang-Kurama, and Sansa hid her smile at her brother's very intentional misinterpretation of the insult. "Gai-ojisan told me an' Sasuke all about how the bacteria in our gut helps with our health!"

Yang-Kurama looked as supremely unimpressed as a gigantic manifestation of chakra and chaos could look, before apparently deciding to ignore Naruto and turn their attention back to Sansa. As soon as they looked away from him, Sansa could see Naruto's sunshine-bright smile curling into his trickster's grin, all sly and laughing.

"How much longer?" Yang-Kurama demanded. "How much longer will we remain chained?"

"I've been doing my best," Sansa told them, grimacing as she thought back on the past few months, where between her busy apprenticeship, her need to fulfil her technical obligations as a shinobi 'studying' to be tokubetsu jōnin with a sealing specialisation as per the Hokage's conditions for her apprenticeship, her need to keep her body in fit and fighting condition due to Kakashi's definitely not ungrounded paranoia about her personal safety while in the village, and "assisting" with Root's integration into the village, she had been doing her best to continue deconstructing the seal. 

"It just– it feels like there's something missing," she said, frustrated. "I feel like I'm trying to brute force my way through a padlocked door when I should really be trying to find the key. I just don't know where that metaphorical key is!"

"Seals of blood and ink naturally weaken over time," Yin-Kurama said slowly. "Namikaze would have known that. He was as smart as he was ruthless– he would have taken some sort of countermeasure to protect the village from a weakening Jinchūriki seal."

"Considering everything that happened that night," Sansa frowned thoughtfully, "Minato wouldn't have had much time to create any sort of secondary defense, nor did he have access to someone to keep it safe."

Yang-Kurama bared their fangs, their sudden burst of renewed hate like a physical weight Sansa could feel pressing down on her.

"I know exactly who was there with him that cursed night, and exactly who would agree to bind us and keep us bound," they snarled. Yin-Kurama seemed to have reached the same realisation and the sudden look of hateful fury on their face was a perfect mirror to their other self.

"The toads," they snarled together.

"Namikaze was contracted with the toad spirits of Mount Myōboku," Yin-Kurama explained to Sansa, moving about the white space agitatedly, their teeth bared. "He summoned one of the chief toads, Gamabunta, when I was ripped from Kushina's seal, and that foul creature helped him imprison me, even after the sharingan's control over me had been broken! He helped to hold me down for Namikaze to tear me in half and lock me back away!"

Sansa felt her lips thin. "So, you believe this Gamabunta will hold the key?" She asked.

"Either he will, or a scroll toad," Yang-Kurama growled.

Sansa blinked.

"Excuse me, did you just say a scroll toad?" she asked incredulously.

Really, Sansa felt she had been incredibly generous in accepting all the impossibilities and oddities of this world she had found herself reborn into, but a scroll toad?

"That's just what you humans call them," Yang-Kurama said dismissively. "They guard the secrets written on their abdomen until their contractor dies, residing in the stomachs of their contractor until then."

"That sounds crazy," Naruto bluntly said exactly what Sansa was thinking. "And really gross."

"Minato died that night, so wouldn't the contract have died with him?" Sansa asked, grimacing in unison with her twin– he was absolutely correct, it was gross.

"It would have," Yin-Kurama said slowly.

"If Namikaze was the only one contracted to the toads." Yang-Kurama finished.

"So... who do we have to cut open to get the scroll toad out of their belly?" Naruto asked. They all stared at him. "What?" He protested. "They're obviously a bad guy if they're helping keep Kurama trapped, and it's not like it will kill them. Probably. It shouldn't kill them if they get help, anyway– Momo-neesan told me when she was pregnant how women get their bellies cut open sometimes to help get a baby out, plus there was this one time when Waka-gashira was really pissed off at this guy, and he totally gutted him and all his intestines fell out, but he didn't die for ages." Naruto finished this horrifying spiel by nodding sagely.

Yang-Kurama swung their head in Sansa's direction.

"Fine," they said begrudgingly. "Maybe we can split the gold dragon."

Sansa held back an unladylike snort because being amused at Yang-Kurama's willingness to admit they might be able to tolerate Naruto was easier than thinking on the implications of Naruto's rambling which had tellingly revealed just how much of Naruto's understanding of 'normal' had been shaped by biggest influences on his life so far– apart from herself, of course– the Yūkaku's whores and yakuza.

Her amusement– and repressed horror– quickly dwindled, however, as she thought back to what had started Naruto's rambling in the first place.

"I only know of one other toad contractor close enough to Minato that Minato would have entrusted him with the key," she said grimly. "Our supposed godfather, Jiraiya."

"Who is very inconveniently and overwhelmingly absent from your lives," Yin-Kurama finished for her.

"He writes letters, though," Naruto pointed out. "And he seems to feel really, really guilty about, you know, that inconvenient and overwhelming absence in our lives."

"What are you thinking?" Sansa asked, because Naruto truly had a brilliant mind for tactics, even if he usually applied it to pranks and other mischief that aimed to annoy and inconvenience the general population of Konoha proper. Naruto grinned his fox-grin back at her.

"I think I'm gonna send my godfather an invitation to my next birthday party," he told her. "And write about how sad I'll be if he misses it."

Sansa laughed at the emotional manipulation Naruto had proposed, one that would certainly be ineffective coming from her but perfectly believable coming from the persona Naruto donned when interacting with anyone outside what he called their "Pack". Even Yin- and Yang-Kurama seemed impressed by Naruto's quick thinking and cunning.

"Then we have a plan," she said.

"We have a plan," both of Kurama's selves spoke as one and the endless white plane seemed to ripple; Sansa watched as Yang-Kurama and Naruto faded from existence and then she abruptly opened her eyes to the small apartment she shared with Naruto, Sasuke, and most of the time Kakashi, or Tenzō if Kakashi was on a mission.

In front of her, Naruto had also opened his eyes and was shaking his head slightly, as if trying to clear water from his ears.

"That was really trippy," he said.

"Trippy? What does that mean?" Sansa asked, unfamiliar with the expression.

"And more importantly, kid," Pakkun spoke from the couch, sounding quite perturbed, "how would you even know what 'trippy' feels like?"

Naruto affected a confused expression that Sansa didn't believe for a second.

"I dunno what you're talkin' 'bout," he said, all perfect innocence. Sansa hadn't missed the return of the Yūkaku accent to his voice, and there was a deeply grieving part of her that mourned how her brother's need to hide was so ingrained that he didn't feel safe to truly be himself, even within the walls of their apartment.

"How did it go?" Sasuke interrupted before either Sansa or Pakkun could continue interrogating Naruto, though Sansa wasn't sure what it was she should be interrogating him about exactly.

"It was terrifying," Naruto answered immediately, giving Sasuke a wide-eyed look, though before Sasuke could start to panic he added, "I have never seen the Fox laugh before. I didn't even know that was something they could do!"

Sasuke relaxed slightly, some of the tension leaving his face. "So it worked?" He asked.

"It worked," Sansa confirmed.

And now, for the first time in months, she had a new lead on breaking the seal that kept Kurama imprisoned– and if freeing Kurama came at the cost of Jiraiya's life? Well, it was Jiraiya who had failed to realise the Hokage had given Sansa over to Danzō to hone into a weapon, it was Jiraiya who had continued her shinobi training before the Chūnin Exams, it was Jiraiya who had been complicit with the Hokage in forcing Sansa to stay a shinobi against her will. And shinobi? They were indoctrinated to take any steps necessary to ensure the success of their mission.

Why should Sansa act in any way other than what they had taught her?

::

Uzumaki Yoka didn't believe them when the rumours first started trickling in.

Yoka had been young when Uzushio bled and burned– but not young enough to forget the sands soaked black with blood and the cracked, crushed rubble blockading the streets, nor those broken, bloated bodies of the dying and dead and the ash that carried on the wind, even long after they'd left their island home so far behind.

There were some things that a person could never be young enough to forget. But still, Yoka had been young. And in her earlier years, she had been less aware of the danger she was in just for the mere fact that she existed. That wasn't necessarily a bad thing either, not when she considered the sheer amount of trauma her earlier memories were drowned in. Like all the surviving Uzumaki, Yoka and her parents had targets on their backs– and, like a good many of the Uzushio survivors, Yoka's parents had not trusted that Konoha would keep them safe, their grudge against Konoha's failure to aid them so great.

Yoka's father, Uzumaki Hamako, died in an ambush by Iwa nin when Yoka was eight.

Her mother, Uzumaki Arisa, died two years later at a small village bar, her throat cut open by Kiri nin until Yoka could see bone. Yoka had only survived because her hair was freshly dyed and the bar owner claimed that ten-year-old "Kimi-chan" was her niece, come to stay with her after her parents had died, all the loyal patrons of the small village's only bar backing up her story.

Yoka had spent the next eight years living in that small village, helping the bar owner in trade for food and a place to sleep. It was while working in the bar that she met her sweetheart, a shinobi from Kusagakure who took her back to his village and married her.

They loved each other and had a beautiful daughter together, their beloved Karin-chan, only for their life together to fall apart when a bratty toddler in the playground bit Karin, exposing her Uzumaki bloodline gift for healing. It was out of her desperate desire to protect her daughter that Yoka "volunteered" the use of her bloodline to Kusa's shinobi, even as Karin was forcibly enlisted into their Ninja Academy. The death of Yoka's husband on a "mission" soon after was no surprise– his death stripped Yoka and her daughter of any protection they had in the village, leaving them open to exploitation.

Yoka considered running to Konoha for refuge but ultimately she had decided against it when she learned that Konoha hadn't even been capable of keeping Kushina-hime, one of Yoka's father's cousins and only surviving member of his family, the Uzumaki's last Princess of the Whirlpools, alive. How could she trust that village with her Karin? How could she trust that they would not abuse her too?

How could she trust that they would keep Karin alive?

Yoka made the best of her situation in Kusa, telling herself that at least they were provided food, lodging, and protection from Kiri and Iwa, even as she dreaded the day that her civilian chakra system was unable to keep up with the heavy demand at the hospital to keep healing Kusa's shinobi. She knew that it would only be so long before it would be Karin in her place, and Yoka would be buried in the ground as just another discarded heap of Uzumaki bones.

And then the whispers came.

Onryō-hime, they called her.

Uzushio's wrathful ghost with her bloodied crown of rubble and bones, risen from the watery depths of her grave to wreak vengeance on those responsible for Uzushio's destruction.

Yoka listened as more and more rumours spread– of how Onryō-hime had summoned a tsunami to flood Kiri; of how she had wielded the lost weapon of the Uzukage of Uzushio against the entire court of the Water Daimyo; of how her hair was the burning red of the flames Uzushio had burned in and how she wore Uzushio's spiral inked on her face in the red of Uzushio's spilled blood.

Yoka listened to the rumors that Onryō-hime was not just an Uzushio nin– no, Onryō-hime was an Uzumaki.

And when the news came that those loyal to the Mizukage who had orchestrated a bloodline in Kiri's shinobi force had been defeated and that the Mizukage himself had been executed by Kiri's rebels in the wake of the Three-Tailed Bijuu tearing free of its seal and rampaging through the village before escaping into the watery depths of the oceans, Yoka knew.

The rumours had also said that Onryō-hime had burned the Mizukage with her touch as she mocked him to his face in the wake of her victory. Yoka may have been a child when Uzushio was destroyed, but she would never forget how her Uzumaki kin had wielded seals of pure chakra, seals that could sink invisible under a person's skin until the time came for them to be activated.

And Uzushio's Onryō-hime had burned the Mizukage with her touch.

Yoka packed her and Karin's things that very night, preparing to escape Kusagakure with her daughter with only one destination in her mind.

The last Princess of the Whirlpools awaited.