Vali faced the army of clones ready to unleash flame and wind. Through her metallic helmet, she could be heard laughing. Her head turned in small ways, flickering between the multitude of clones, calculating the attack radius and searching for a way out; a counter; anything.
After finding no gaps, her laughter redoubled.
Just like that, her armor disappeared, and she plummeted toward the ground, catching herself at the last second with her glowing wings.
She flew straight at Naruto, but without her armor he didn't react to it as a threat. Sure enough, she stopped directly in front of him.
"Very good! Much better than I expected, Naruto Phenex!" Vali said. "I never expected you to reach a draw!"
"Draw?" Naruto asked, cocking his head.
"Yes. A draw," Vali said.
She didn't look worried about the clones Naruto had summoned; she was confident that while she wasn't fighting, he wouldn't attack. Vali inclined her head toward the clones.
"I don't know if I can survive that attack," she announced in a cheerful voice. "I might actually lose! But that's all we can know. MAYBE it would go that way. Or, I might be able to survive, break through, and slay you. Whichever way it would go, we can't find out, because you'll never fire this attack."
Naruto's voice was slightly animalistic right now, the same as it'd been when he'd first started calling on the tailed beast chakra in his past life. "You don't know that I won't."
"I do." Vali leaned her head to the side, silvery hair hanging over her shoulder. She sounded almost apologetic. "Or have you forgotten where we are?"
On the edge of Kuoh Town… Behind where Vali had been hovering in the air was the city itself. The area they were standing in was an undeveloped hillside, but Naruto's earlier attack had devastated a whole stretch of Kuoh's woodlands. That attack had the combined power of himself and a single clone.
Now there was an ARMY of them. It took an extremely short calculation to determine that if he pulled the trigger, so to speak, then while Vali's survival chances were undetermined, at least half the town was doomed.
"I see you get it now," Vali said. "I'll apologize for the way things turned out. It's never my intention to challenge a worthy opponent in a place where they can't go all out. I'll remember you, Naruto. The next time we see each other, I'll make sure we can go all the way."
That promise left mixed signals, because she lunged forward after offering it.
Naruto's ability to sense negative emotions had returned the moment he became "whole" again. He'd adjusted to it immediately, old habits coming back, leaving him already relying on the ability. For all his immense reflexes, his body was only trained to react to those who held negative feelings toward him… Which meant that Vali managed to get right into his face without him ever moving.
She had beautiful hazel eyes and lustrous pale skin. Naruto saw all the details as she kissed him on the lips. She even bit his lower lip, dragging it as she pulled back. While he stood there stupidly, his clones started to hoot and catcall them. Vali flipped her hair over one shoulder.
"See you again," she winked.
Vali turned and walked off, putting her hands in her pockets like she was an ordinary girl walking down the street. Naruto caught himself staring, especially at the back of her pants, where thick curves were stretching tight leather.
Vali joined her three allies, who had followed the fight, and the little blond girl in her entourage created a teleportation magical circle beneath them. They disappeared in a flash of light.
Frowning because, frankly, he was still a little confused, Naruto dismissed his clones. Smoke filled the sky as they all disappeared, some grumbling that they hadn't gotten to release their techniques, although they understood the reason why.
"What have you done with our king?"
Naruto looked around. Now that Vali was gone, he recognized that not all the youkai had fled. The majority of the army were lingering not too far away, not approaching him either… But the leaders had formed a circle around Naruto, hemming him in on four sides.
The massive horned ogre was holding his weapon, back on his feet with no visible damage from Naruto's prior attack, but was far more visibly cautious now. The woman with dark skin and dog ears was making strange shapes with her hands, causing the three clouds circling her to charge up with plenty of electricity. The bent little old man with a misshapen head had his arms behind his back, but his gaze was sharp.
Finally, the one who spoke to Naruto was another kitsune, this one with golden hair and a kimono that showed off enough of her chest to see that her hair wasn't the only thing she had in common with Tsunade. Like Tsunade, she was probably way older than she looked… Not that Naruto cared one way or the other. He was getting used to that in this life, growing up in the underworld.
Naruto looked around at the three beings surrounding him, each of them striking him as powerful. More so than Kuroka, even, but weaker than Vali.
"I didn't do anything bad! I didn't even do anything on purpose," Naruto said. "Problem is, I don't really know what I did, and I've gotta figure that out. So… I'll be back in a minute."
Before they could attack him, putrid orange chakra surrounded Naruto. It felt acidic even to him, and gave the youkai pause. It made him freeze for a moment, too.
'Haven't seen this in a while!' Naruto thought to himself.
He needed more, though. This chakra wasn't going to cut it. So he paused for a second, focusing on making the chakra HIS.
The color turned from reddish orange to a golden yellow after just a few seconds of tug of war. It wasn't as good as what he was working with during the war, but it'd do just fine.
"Be right back!" Naruto howled.
He shot into the air so fast that the youkai hesitated. They probably wanted to give chase, but Naruto's fiery wings came out of his back, now covered in a golden hue just like his clothes and skin.
With more speed than ever before, Naruto flew above Japan, covering a huge portion of the country exceptionally quickly. When he spotted a huge shape on the horizon he made that his destination. Shockingly quickly, he landed on the peak of Japan's most famous mountain, his feet touching down on the snows of Mount Fuji.
"Alright… You can come out now!" Naruto said.
His golden chakra disappeared as a kitsune—or the King of Beasts—was disgorged from his body. She landed on her knees in the snow, looking down at herself or at their surroundings, just not at Naruto himself.
"Kurama?" he asked.
"What? Whaaaaaat?" She poked her fingers together, making the gesture Hinata had been known for when her social anxiety got the best of her. "I've never heard of a nine-tailed fox with that name. Although they sound pretty powerful…"
"Why are you a girl?" Naruto asked.
"Whah!" She jumped up, suddenly getting in his face and grabbing his collar. "So what if I am? Why can't I be? Why don't you just shut up—"
She stopped completely when she felt Naruto hug her.
Regardless of her female body, he wrapped his arms around Kurama and squeezed.
"I'm glad you're here," Naruto said.
Kurama hesitated. Slowly, like a being still getting used to having legs and arms, she awkwardly patted his back just above the waist, sort of hugging him back.
"Whatever, brat," she mumbled.
Fifteen minutes later, Naruto and Kurama were sitting side by side on the snow, looking at the view from Japan's tallest mountain. There wasn't a whole lot for them to see on account of a thick cloud layer. If they squinted, they could see out to the ocean, though. This would be a great place to watch the sunrise but that was still hours away.
"So you were reborn as a youkai?" Naruto asked. "You started out near Kyoto, and took over the East Youkai Faction, then conquered the other three to take over all the youkai in Japan?"
"I just told you the story, brat," Kurama said. "Yes, that's how it happened."
"But if that's true, in this world, you were born less than twenty years ago."
"What about it?" Kurama asked.
Naruto turned to the side, pointing an accusing finger straight in her face. "Then you're not even older than me! We're the same age! So why are you still calling me a brat?"
Kurama brushed red hair over one of her pail shoulders, lifting her nose in the air imperiously. "I'm still uncountably older than you. I was razing cities before your mother was even a glimmer in her mother's eye. You'll always be a brat to me!"
She paused.
"I didn't expect you to be a devil though. I didn't expect you to be here at all. I thought I reformed in a whole new dimension, just like I used to before, just in a slightly different body… But I thought you were dead."
"I'm pretty sure I was," Naruto admitted cheerfully. "I got reincarnated. I even started as a squishy little baby! I knew you wouldn't be completely gone. We're still linked, somehow, maybe because we came to this dimension together. I had no way of knowing for sure that you were in the same place I was, though. And I didn't expect you to show up with boobs."
Naruto leaned back so fast that his body created wind, blowing snow from its resting place and scattering it in the air. Kurama's hand had swiped at him, wielding claws made of her chakra that Naruto was preeetty sure would've cut his throat if he didn't move.
Maybe he'd made a mistake when he told her that he could heal from any wound…
"Bijuu don't even have genders," Kurama grumbled. "That's just something humans attributed to us because of our voices. We were constructs of chakra, nothing else. If I was going to show up in a puny little bipedal body, it was a coin toss which form I got."
Naruto shrugged. He didn't actually care that much. What was important was that they had met again. His body was singing on the inside, now that he was close to Kurama again; he felt whole in a way that he hadn't realized he was missing. It would be good to have his partner with him again.
Suddenly, Naruto found Kurama pointing at him, similar to what he'd done after realizing they were both the same age.
She went a step further a few seconds later by leaping to her feet, the chest that Naruto had pointed out bouncing from the motion.
"Don't even say it!" Kurama said. "Look, back in the Elemental Nations I was always following your lead, stuck in that damn seal! But here, I'm free. I'm the King of Beasts. I can't leave you to your own devices now that I know you're here… But I'm not just going to accept you as the boss, you hear me! Here, we're on equal footing. If you want my power, you've gotta earn it!"
Naruto grinned. He stood up, forcing Kurama to lift her arm in order to keep her finger aimed at his face. He was taller than her.
"You're more important than your power," he said. "Now that I've found my friend again, I'm not letting you go easily! Even if you've got boobs, for some reason… But I'm not about to drop everything in my life and go be your servant! I'll prove myself to you and then some, or my name's not Naruto Uzu—" Naruto stopped, missing a beat, before his grin grew brighter and he carried on. "Or my name's not Naruto Phenex!"
Kurama's tails fanned out. She grinned, showing off her sharp teeth, and Naruto grinned back, his cheeks stretching beneath his whisker birthmarks.
He took flight, Kurama leaped into the air off of the mountain, and without a word the two of them sped over the clouds toward the ocean, searching for an arena to settle this.
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