Succession

Inside Kamui's mindscape

The nine-tailed fox was furious. It had once again been sealed into a human woman and made into a weapon of war. Even worse, it was split in half and will be used by two people; that's twice the exploitation.

"I guess it makes sense. The vast majority of my hatred lies in my yin attribute, while my life energy lies in my yang. Although he probably didn't know this going in, having this part inside the girl makes a lot of sense. Her eventual sharingan won't allow me any freedom of movement.

Looking around to gain its bearing in its new cage, it saw a scene it wasn't expecting.

A large garden could be seen with an assortment of colored trees with all kinds of variety. There were seven dominant colors: silver, gold, green, blue, purple, red, and black. A silvery white orb was quickly releasing ribbons of silvery-white energy with flashes of the seven other colors into Kamui's body, which the mental world represented as a slowly growing ocean of the same set of colors, though is was more of a pond at the moment.

'What is this?' He had never seen anything like it. This was unlike any phenomenon he had seen in his roughly three millennia of life.

Suddenly, the orb pulled his tails toward itself and starting to drain its chakra in vast quantities. As it did this, the streams it was releasing grew exponentially in proportion with the chakra being consumed.

"What's happening!?" He shouted as confusion and fear overtook him. "Let go! I will not be destroyed, not before I regain my freedom."

"You're merging with me." Said a voice coming from his right side.

When he took a look, he was surprised. A beautiful young woman with silvery-white colored hair that appeared to be in her early twenties stood behind him, a massive silver dragon projection standing behind her. Looking closer, the dragon projection had wounds running along every part of its body; its eyes were dull and it looked like it was on its last legs.

"What are you!?" he was getting really scared. He had lost over half of his chakra and the orb wasn't stopping anytime soon.

"Me? Who I am doesn't matter or at least it won't when this is finished. We will merge and our personalities will both be destroyed." Outraged, the nine-tails was about to comment, when the mysterious woman continued. "My personality will be used as the core for the new one and your memories will take priority in the reconstruction. Most of mine won't matter for my successor, so she'll have to learn everything herself with a few hints of what my powers were. It wouldn't due for her not to realize the true potential we will provide her. All my skills and weapons are gone at this point. Traveling this far with the wounds I was given cost almost everything I had. All that's left is my will and divine essence. These will merge with your chakra and create a new entity in its place. It will serve as the core of her world and teach her how to use her power until she's ready to merge with it. Once they become one, she will fully cease to be human and shall become something more. I'm explaining this as a courtesy to you, since I'm using you as a reagent of this concoction.

He wanted to yell; he wanted to shout. It was useless though. Every instinct he had cultivated told him he didn't stand a chance. Even if this girl wasn't very powerful at the moment, her mind was greater than his and in this seal, that was all that mattered.

"Why are you doing this?" The nine-tailed beast was shocked. His anger was slowly replaced with helplessness and shock. How could she willingly give herself up like this? What could compel her to give up everything, especially for a human?

"If I don't do this, I'll die without a successor." She replied with a bit of bitterness. "I can't survive for long, so I will use the last of my power to create a new legacy for her to inherit. My past will only get in the way".

Finally, the nine-tailed fox gave her a long look before sighing and finally being fully absorbed into her core. She too began to slowly disappear, but decided to leave her heir with a final present. She looked into her successor's mind and found a remnant chakra being integrated into her soul. It was odd that a third foreign entity would invade. Unlike the fox who radiated anger, hate, and suffering from his imprisonment and natural inclination, this one seemed to be radiating hate, anger and a desire for conflict from personal choice. This one was likely a previous human, who had become a shade of vengeance. This one would need to be destroyed as well. In her final act, she pulled the soul from her successor, purged its consciousness, separated its chakra and memories, and finally returned the two to her successor. With this, the chakra could integrate into its host without being corrupted by its previous hosts memories. The memories themselves would be integrated into the newly created entity to aid the host and provide her with information. She had passed no small number of souls essences on the way to this realm, which she already pushed into the mix. It would be interesting to see what form her successor would take. It was too bad she wouldn't live to see it.

With this, she let out one last smile and disappeared. She wasn't worried about this process being discovered by the outside world. They didn't have enough mastery over the world around them to find the new chakra mass.

Slowly, the chakra mass began to fuse and form the new entity. It would take a long time to finish and would finally condense in no less than six years.

Setting his now-deceased friend down, Minato looked toward the girl with a frown. Quickly, he placed his hand on her stomach and realized that something was wrong.

'It's gone. The nine-tails should have been in the seal, but it's disappeared.' He said with widening eyes.

This needed to be investigated in secret. The seal on her stomach was already dissolving as proof that the creature wasn't there. Where could it have gone? Without that portion of the nine-tails, they would be without a full tailed beast; Naruto's portion would only be slightly stronger than the eight-tails. He would need to keep a close eye on this child for any further clues.

'Maybe, it'll grow back?' he thought with a weak spark of hope, thinking that Naruto's half may grow to fill the deficiency.

"Lord Hokage!" he heard behind him as anbu started to arrive along with his predecessor.

"What happened Minato?" asked the third Hokage wanting a quick briefing of today's events.

"I'll explain it at the council meeting, but first" He looked at the anbu. "Let the Hyuga, Yamanaka, and Nara Clans know that I'll be visiting on short notice. There's an emergency business meeting to discuss. Following that I'll be briefing today's events and follow-up actions to the village council."

"Yes, Lord Hokage!" and they dispersed to their tasks.