Chapter Text
In the years following Manami's departure for Nami no Kuni, Nagisa feels unmoored.
She focuses on her studies, trying to ignore the crippling loneliness that is now part of her day-to-day life. The villagers' disdain feels sharper than before, and the walls of Konoha itself more oppressive.
Once, she is desperate enough to attempt seeking out other Uzumaki-blooded civilians. After two doors slammed on her face and a woman hissing that she wants to live peacefully without dealing with any more ostracisation, she gives up.
She feels empty, and it makes her reckless. Reckless enough to lift a book on shinobi handsigns from the library and use it to painstakingly communicate with Naruto. Through fits and starts, they create a language that works for them. It wields better results than Nagisa's attempt at reading in reverse. She often wrote Naruto letters then puzzled over his for hours, incapable of deciphering his handwriting. His drawings were not much better.
She learns that for a year spent in her world, three days pass in his, but time dilates when they look at each other. Naruto is eighteen and has lived through a war, he did not expect to suddenly find himself linked to another version of himself, but he doesn't think it's too bad. She asks how he sees her, and he says her image is reflected the same way his is. He keeps a well-polished kunai on him at all times: that is where he sees her most often, and he can interact with her mirror image the same way he talks to the Kyuubi. The connection is both visual and spiritual. He says he can tell when she is watching.
Naruto tells her she was a cute baby. It's terribly embarrassing.
When she asks if he has told anyone, he shakes his head. The war has taken a toll on everyone, and he didn't want his people to worry. Nagisa is relieved. She likes that it's a secret between the two of them. He does warn her that if he ever thinks this soul bond of theirs is a danger to her, he will try to sever it. He also says that he will find a way to cross over if she ever needs him.
It's nice, to have someone who cares.
She tells him she plans to leave Konoha.
"I know," he signs. "I support you, Uzukage-sama," he adds with a cheeky grin and a flourish of the hand.
She beams at him.
She asks him if he thinks it's reckless to follow her dream when she knows what is to come. He shakes his head. "It will be fine. Have faith in yourself."
Aside from her talks with Naruto, the closest she ever comes to being content is during her personal training.
Nagisa improves, day after day.
She consistently beats her classmates in spars now, Sasuke and Shino being the only ones who can go toe to toe with her. Her mastery of the standard ninja weaponry has greatly improved. She refines her ninjutsu as much as she can, and harasses the Sandaime until he gives her a wind jutsu to practice elemental manipulation. She tries for a water jutsu as well, having previously determined that she is dual-natured, but Sarutobi puts his foot down. One potentially destructive technique in the hands of his little tornado is enough. Nagisa doesn't protest. She'll learn more later. For now, she is content with her Great Breakthrough. She practises using it while moving, increasing its output and directing it down to propel herself to the air.
Her genjutsu is still awful, but she is better at recognising and dispelling it. It takes a tremendous amount of effort, but she can do it.
Aside from the core classes, she excels at sealing. The teaching unit is optional, but she applies for the elective in her sixth year at the Academy. Her application form gets lost multiple times, so she shows up at the teacher's office and requests to be added to the class. To her surprise, the teacher in charge of the elective is Naruto's Iruka-nii. She's never met him before.
The man smells angry when he looks at her, but he stays professional. He frowns when she tells him that she submitted three application forms and none made it to him. He does not call her a liar, and adds her to the class. Under his guidance, she learns how to power and write a variety of tags. She can now create small barriers, fill an area with light, explosives or smoke, store objects and bodies in scrolls, and silence enemies. Besides her, Hyuuga Hinata and two civilian boys are the only students who applied. Nagisa thinks it's a shame, sealing is awesome.
She makes fun of Naruto when he tells her that he didn't even know Iruka-sensei could do all that. Nagisa admits to him that she has him to thank for many of the things she feels brave enough to do. She couldn't have survived without knowing why she is treated this way. It would have killed her, she thinks.
Naruto disagrees. Vehemently. To the point he stops and writes, "You're an idiot. You would have survived. You're strong. You stand up for yourself, you know your own worth, and you're more resourceful than I was," on a piece of paper.
"That's all thanks to you," she signs before pausing and shyly adding in the hand sign for "older brother.".
He grins and mouths a word that suspiciously looks like, "imouto."
She can tell he is sad that she wants to abandon Konoha. But he understands that everyone must make their own choices. He only asks her to give his precious people a chance. Nagisa promises to do so, if only he tells her how to talk to the Kyuubi.
That day, she stays after class and spends the evening with Iruka-sensei. He shows her ways to improve her sealing skills, and gives her a few nudges to understand how to create personalised tags. After that, she wheedles him until he accepts to let her treat her to ramen. He still smells like grief and a little like anger when he looks at her pointy teeth and whisker marks, but by the end of the night, it has vastly diminished. Nagisa still doesn't want to have to earn the family she claims for herself, but she thinks Naruto's way might be less lonely.
And when she comes back home, she lays on her bed and presses a hand to her stomach.
"Soon," she murmurs. "When I'm a genin, they'll stop watching me as much. We'll talk then, if you allow it."
As Nagisa falls asleep, she swears she can hear the slow rumble of the Kyuubi echo in her mind.
***
Nagisa does not fail her three mid-term exams, and no one expects her to fail the final one either.
Mizuki-sensei, the man who tricked Naruto in the mirror world, is arrested as a traitor the day she receives her hitai-ate. This also means She pays it no mind, and goes shopping instead. The next day, her team designation will be announced, and she wants to be properly outfitted. She heads to a shinobi gear shop, and buys herself a reinforced sleeveless and backless dark blue top with a high neck and two hanging lapels reaching her mid-thigh, an orange obi to tie around her waist and mesh arm warmers reaching below her shoulders. She stocks up on bandages and treats herself to a brand new kunai pouch. She has saved for this occasion for a long time, and has been daydreaming about this outfit for even longer. She wishes she could have worn Manami-nee's orange haori everyday, but she doesn't want to damage it.
When she comes to the Academy the next day, Sakura and Ino are in the middle of a dispute over who will sit with Sasuke, whose shoulders are drawn up to his ears. Nagisa watches. She hesitates. Then goes to sit on the other side.
"You looked like you were going to try to stop them for a second," comments Shikamaru at the back of the class.
Nagisa glances at him curiously. Kiba is lounging on the table on his left side, and Chouji is eating on his right. She has never meaningfully interacted with the slackers. She only knows that Kiba's mom wants him to avoid her and that he can smell the kitsune on her, though he doesn't know what it is. He's only said her scent is weird. Chouji is always polite to her but she hates being paired with him in anything since he refuses to hit a girl. Nagisa always feels like as a kunoichi, she has so much more to prove than Naruto ever did.
Shikamaru on the other hand has talked to her a few times, but only when they did assignments together. He always looked at the civilians who insulted her like they were out of their minds, though. She appreciates that, even if he never did anything to stop them.
"I thought about it," she admits. "But it would only make them yell harder."
The Nara heir nods approvingly. "And the whole class thanks you for it. You are kunoichi of the year, aren't you?"
"I am," she says. "It was close, though. My genjutsu..."
She grimaces. Shikamaru makes a conceding nod. She doesn't need to say more. He knows how her clones usually end up. Since Iruka-sensei was proctoring the exam however, she got to show him the Kage Bunshin and glean a few extra points for it. It made all the difference.
Iruka-sensei enters the room, his clipboard in hand. Nagisa straightens. She listens as he greets everyone and starts listing the team assignments. It starts as she expected.
"Aburame Shino, Inuzuka Kiba and Hyuuga Hinata will be Team Eight under Yuuhi Kurenai." Iruka-sensei pauses before continuing. "Yamanaka Ino, Nara Shikamaru and Akimichi Chouji will be Team Ten under Sarutobi Asuma. Uzumaki Nagisa, Uchiha Sasuke and Sai will be Team Seven under Hatake Kakashi."
She takes a sharp intake of breath. Iruka-sensei sends her a curious look before continuing. Nagisa tunes out the outraged sounds as Haruno Sakura, Ami and Kasumi are placed on Team Six under jounin Uzuki Yugao.
"Where is this Sai guy," wonders Kiba while he's picking his nose. "Never seen him before."
Someone materialises right up to his ear and whispers, "Right here."
Kiba shrieks then sputters. "What is wrong with you, man?" he exclaims, clutching Akamaru.
"Are you a ninja or not?" asks Sai with a flat tone.
It makes the boys wary. Shikamaru in particular straightens, sensing that this is not an ordinary genin.
Nagisa observes the new arrival. The first thing she notes is that his eyes are completely empty. Sai's skin tone is also pale enough to give her pause. The short glimpses she had of him in Naruto's memories do not tell her how to handle him. He was older then. Looking at him, she sees a slight resemblance with Sasuke, but his ink-black hair is much darker than Uchiha's almost midnight blue locks. The dark eyes are the same though. His brush, scrolls, and ink peek from his backpack and pockets. She is much more interested in those.
Nagisa stands and steps forward. She bows, though not low enough to expose her neck.
"I'm Uzumaki Nagisa. I'll be in your care."
Sai looks puzzled, but he mimics the gesture gamely enough. His expression is still entirely flat, but there is something... He seems uncertain, like he's taking his cues from her.
She also bows towards Sasuke and repeats the same phrase. He frowns and only inclines his head. Unlike Naruto, Nagisa did not develop an intense rivalry with the boy. She has been civil and only interacted with him during spars. As a result, he does not know her enough to snub her.
Iruka watches them with interest before calling out to all the students. He invites their sensei in, and lets the students file in after their designated teachers. Soon enough, Team Seven is the only one left.
"I didn't know private teaching was still being done," comments Iruka when they are alone.
"It is rare, but I was geared for an apprenticeship. My sensei had a specific skillset and needed more involved teaching to share it with me. Unfortunately, he died before I could graduate as genin under his tutelage, so I passed the Academy Exam instead," explains Sai, his voice as toneless as before. Nagisa will have to get used to it, even if it grates on her sensitive ears. Which reminds her...
She takes a cautious intake of breath and grimaces. Sai smells like ink and nothing else. She and Kiba exchange a look. As the only two students with enhanced hearing and sense of smell, they are equally bothered by the boy's lack of presence. Akamaru is also inching away from her new teammate. The Inuzuka boy mouths, "Better you than me!" before leaning back on his chair. Nagisa glares at him.
At their teacher's questioning look, Sai rattles off an identification number. Iruka relaxes. Nagisa does not. Naruto's memories are hard to sparse, but she knows enough to tell this boy is a spy, and his early appearance does not bode well. She is the only thing that is different in this world.
Does someone suspect her, or is it just because she is a girl and no one else made the cut so they had to look elsewhere? Maybe Sai is not yet a spy. Nagisa does not know who he is loyal to or when he started spying on their behalf, only that it's someone from the village. She thinks whoever it is might suspect her loyalty to not be as unshakeable as the Hokage believes it is. She might just be paranoid.
So she will have to fool them, and ask Naruto for advice once she gets a moment alone. For now, she had other things to worry about.
"Ne, Iruka-sensei? What do you know about Hatake Kakashi? Is he on a Bingo Book?"
Sasuke, who had only been boredly evaluating Sai until then, straightens in interest.
Iruka's eye twitches. Nagisa suspects he doesn't like their jounin sensei. "He is on every nation's Bingo Book. Kakashi-san is an S-rank shinobi."
Nagisa hums.
She's not sure why Naruto's Team Seven hadn't even tried to ask. She thinks they were all a little silly in a way this team will not necessarily allow themselves to be. Nagisa mourns this. In a way, her soulbond with Naruto had robbed her of her innocence, and she has to grieve the carefree girl she could have been. But she wouldn't trade it for the world. Thanks to Naruto, she'll never be alone; the universe has given her a priceless gift.
She won't squander it.
"Does he know fuuinjutsu?" she asks, leaning forward.
"I don't know, Nagisa-chan. But if he doesn't, I'm sure he'll assign supplementary teaching for you. You just need to ask." Iruka turns to the two boys. "This goes for you too. Never hesitate to ask your sensei for what you need. He's there to help you become an accomplished team, but he can only do that if you meet him halfway."
Nagisa grins and nods at her teacher before turning to Sasuke and Sai. "What're your specialisations? I can see why Team Eight and Ten were put together, it's pretty obvious, but the all-girl team and ours are a bit weirder, don't you think?"
Sasuke eyes her warily. "Hn."
Nagisa thinks he keeps expecting her to fawn over him like a fangirl. She doesn't understand it. Nagisa and Hinata had never exhibited that type of behaviour towards him.
(Nagisa didn't know what to think of Hyuuga Hinata. The girl always gave her a nod and a stuttered hello, but if Nagisa tried to talk to her, she shied away. Hinata smelled like anxiety and a little like envy and something else entirely that she couldn't identify. Nagisa tried to ignore it, like she ignored the way Aburame Shino always made sure not to touch her if he could help it, discomfort obvious on his face, the way Nara Shikamaru stared at her like she was a puzzle to figure out, how Inuzuka Kiba bared his teeth unconsciously when he smelled the fox and alternated between pestering her to annoy his mom or forgetting about her entirely. How Yamanaka Ino pretended she didn't exist, Akimichi Chouji looked sympathetic when civilians treated her like a monster but never reached out. Like she ignored the way Haruno Sakura Uchiha found her annoying and Sasuke did not see they were kindred spirits in this village made of lies.
Nagisa does not care.
She doesn't.)
"I'm primarily a long distance fighter," says Sai tonelessly, though his eyes seem to brighten in interest. "I specialise in ninjutsu and fuuinjutsu. My chakra affinity is earth. I am interested in refining my taijutsu and kenjutsu."
Nagisa brightens. "You studied fuuinjutsu? We'll have to compare notes. Ne, can you make your own seals? The Academy only teaches us how to copy and recognise pre-existing seals, so my knowledge is pretty elementary. Ah, my specialties are the same, but I'd add taijutsu to the list, which makes me short to mid-range. I'm dual-natured, so it's wind and water for me. I want to focus on my pre-existing skills more than becoming well-rounded. I'm also interested in learning tracking and sabotage, I suppose."
She also wants to see if she can manifest the Adamantine chains like her mother did, but she's not about to tell them that.
They both turn to their last teammate, who looks like he's contemplating ignoring them before he thinks better of it. Weirdly enough, Nagisa thinks that as opposed to Naruto's Team Seven, where Sasuke's focus and his horrible experiences comparatively made him the most mature member of his team, this version of Sasuke is probably the one who acts his age the most.
Sai is a soldier already, and it shows. She wonders how it came to be, but no one gained an assignment to
Meanwhile, Nagisa has the imprint of Naruto's soul all over her. This, her childhood in the Ume District, her ostracisation and her intimate awareness of what she is in the eyes of the village leadership — a weapon, never a child — has given her wisdom beyond her years.
"Mostly mid to long range. I specialise in bukijutsu, ninjutsu and taijutsu," says Sasuke shortly. "My affinity is fire. Interested in adding kenjutsu and genjutsu to my skillset."
Nagisa tilts her head. "I thought you were a lightning type."
She taps her nose to indicate how she could tell. Sasuke frowns.
"I didn't test it. But Uchiha are always fire."
He says this with a certainty Nagisa envies him.
Sai hums. "Uchiha Shisui was recorded to have a lightning affinity."
"How do you know that?" asks the last Uchiha aggressively.
The answer is nonchalant. "It's in his Bingo Book entry for Kumo. My master collects them," he adds when they give him confused frowns. "They are a useful resource."
Nagisa nods in understanding. That's true, but she wouldn't have had access to them. They're not accessible to civilians, so Academy students can't consult them. Now that she's a genin, she'll have access to the higher levels of the library.
She guesses Sasuke's parents must have had some in their house, but she doesn't think it would be tactful to point that out.
"Maybe you're dual-natured like I am." She inhales more carefully. "You probably are and I didn't notice because everyone smells like fire in the village."
Sasuke looks like he doesn't know what to say to that. His shoulders are wound tight, and he seems to notice they are eyeing him carefully because he forcibly relaxes and makes a non-committal sound.
An awkward silence settles over them. Nagisa suppresses a sigh. She at least needs to attempt to bond with her teammates. She promised Naruto to give his precious people a chance after all, and it is also necessary to make an attempt at fitting in if she doesn't want to be flagged as a potential flight risk.
She makes eye contact with Iruka who gives her a sympathetic smile. She straightens and leans towards Sai before interrogating him about fuuinjutsu again. It turns out that his ninjutsu techniques incorporates sealing knowledge to some extent and he can read Konoha seal script, but that's it. She asks if he would be willing to teach her, to which he says that they can revisit the question later.
That is not a yes, she notes carefully, but doesn't comment on it. She's already playing with fire by asking him about his sealing skills when she knows leadership would prefer to keep her as far from fuuinjutsu as they can get away with. Nagisa suspects that the only reason why she hadn't been forced out of Iruka's elective is because the Sandaime had vouched for her, which is a strange feeling to say the least.
She's so used to blaming the old man for everything, but he does look out for her sometimes.
After some time, Sai pulls out a notebook and starts drawing. Sasuke sharpens his kunai at his desk and Iruka taps his fingers impatiently, cursing their sensei under his breath.
Nagisa occupies her time by doing chakra exercises, trying to wrestle her unbearably unwieldy reserves into something interesting. Then she summons a shadow clone and tries turning it into other things. She got the idea from Naruto's stupid genderbending jutsu — she hates it so much, why is her counterpart like this — and she thinks this might be a good alternative to henge. But she can't do more than change her hair colour to yellow before the clone dispels itself. It's frustrating, but she's not giving up.
She can feel Sasuke's curious gaze on her, but he's not saying anything so she ignores it. Instead she tries to get her clone to look as much like Naruto as she possibly can before it dispels. She does not even notice Iruka leaving.
This is how Kakashi-sensei finds her.
"How can I put this?" he starts, "My first impression of you guys... well, you're boring."
***
After being directed to the roof for their team introduction, their sensei asks them to introduce themselves. Since no one seems to want to volunteer, Nagisa challenges him to do it first.
“I'm Kakashi Hatake. Things I like and things I hate… I don't feel like telling you that. My dreams for the future… never really thought about it. As for my hobbies… I have lots of hobbies.”
Lame, thinks Nagisa. Her thoughts must show on her face because Kakashi gives her an eye-smile and says, "your turn, kiddo."
She grimaces.
"My name is Uzumaki Nagisa, I like..." Manami-nee, fuuinjutsu, my clan and everything that ties me to it, the fox in my stomach, "cup ramen. What I like even more is the restaurant ramen Iruka-sensei. What I dislike is waiting three minutes for the cup ramen to cook. My dream..." is to be Uzukage, restore my village and free the tailed beast jailed inside of me, "is to surpass Hokage!. And then... have all the people of this village acknowledge me!"
Nagisa finds that she does mean the last part. She wants the people of Konoha to look at the leader of a rebuilt Uzushio and lament not just the loss of a jinchuuriki but also of someone who is competent and valuable as just herself.
She turns expectantly to the two boys.
"My name is Sai. I like drawing and..." he hesitates, his eyes shuttering, "my brother." Sasuke twitches as he says so. Nagisa tilts her head. Sai smells like grief all of a sudden. His brother is dead, she understands, dismayed. After a beat, his scent disappears, which startles her. "My dream... is to serve my village."
"Eh? Is that really a dream if that's already what you're doing? What's your goal for the future?" asks Nagisa.
Sai falters. This is the second break in her composure she sees since he mentioned his brother. Nagisa wishes she knew more about his past. It would help her understand what is going on in his head. As it is, she doesn't know and it rattles her.
"I..." he starts before trailing off, unsure.
"Maa, Sai-chan doesn't have to share if he doesn't want to," says Kakashi, raising his hands in a placating manner. "Why don't you go next, Sasuke-chan?"
The Rookie of the Year eyes their sensei balefully before turning his gaze to the horizon.
“Uchiha Sasuke. There are tons of things I dislike but I don’t really like anything. And… I don’t want to use the word “dream” but… I have an ambition. The resurrection of my clan and… to kill a certain man.”
"Are you talking about—" starts Sai.
Kakashi once more cuts him off with a pointed look, then gives them direction to a training ground for their genin test. Once that is done, he shunshins away, leaving behind only a handful of leaves.
Nagisa stares at her two teammates. By all rights, she should try and socialise with them, get to know them better. But she finds herself abruptly exhausted. The idea of carrying a conversation for the three of them for another two hours sounds deeply unappealing. Besides, she has better things to do.
"Well. I'm gonna go, ya know. See ya tomorrow," she says as she vaults off the building, channeling chakra to her limbs to cushion her fall. "Let's get ramen sometime," she adds as an afterthought as she is falling.
She dashes back to her apartment with giddy steps. She ignores the stares from passersby with an ease borne from habit and pulls out her key once she gets into the Ume District. It only takes her a few additional minutes to be home, where she sticks her tongue out at her mirror, where Naruto eyes her hitai-ate with pride.
There, she does her usual stretching routine and attempts a few chakra control exercises before cooking herself ramen. She adds a handful of sliced shiitake mushrooms, spring onions and a narutomaki to garnish it. She usually doesn't bother, but it makes her feel more adult. Then she settles into bed and pretends to sleep.
She meditates.
As Naruto told her, she presses a hand to the seal on her stomach. She tries to feel for the difference between the red corrosive chakra of the Kyuubi and her own, more coral-coloured chakra. It is difficult. Despite being aware of the truth, she has never conceptualise her chakra as two separate entities, and they are intertwined in a way that is almost seamless.
But her exercises in control help in that. It takes half an hour of focused meditation before she finds herself in the prison Naruto told her about. It looks different than she imagined it, though.
The gloomy and humid building of Naruto's memories is there, but sanded down by a superimposed landscape. A bright open beach swallows the stone and concrete prison, the water lapping gently at the eroded surface. The Kyuubi is still behind bars, but his cell is wide and bright and facing the ocean.
A voice rumbles like a storm, breaking Nagisa from her contemplation.
"Come closer, child," she hears and shivers.
She takes small, wary steps towards the cage, mindful of the fact that she might love the fox like she loves herself, but she does not know him.
Nagisa stands in front of the creature her father sealed inside of her. He is beautiful. His fur shines a russet colour bordering on copper and his eyes are a carmine red, the same colour as his chakra. The kitsune towers over her and for the first time in her life, she understands exactly what made the civilians fear her.
"Your thoughts are very loud, you know," says the Kyuubi. "They woke me from my slumber years before I had fully recovered from what your village put me through."
"What did they do?" Nagisa asks before she can help herself.
She winces. She hadn't meant to say that.
"Beyond robbing me of my freedom and using me for their own gain, you mean?" he asks in a low voice, amused. "My chakra is being misappropriated and that cursed clan of doujutsu users you have keep using the power they inherited to make me do their bidding. How's that?"
Nagisa blinks. "The Uchiha?"
The Kyuubi growls. Nagisa tenses. When the kitsune notices, he subsides.
"Nevermind them. I want to talk about you. Why are you here?"
The girl looks down at her hands, suddenly hesitant, before straightening her back and her resolve. She bows low.
"I'm Uzumaki Nagisa and I'm sorry for what my parents did to you. I'm gonna set you free, believe it!"
When she raises herself up, the fox is staring at her, dumbfounded. A moment of silence passes between them.
Then the Kyuubi bursts out laughing.
Nagisa blinks. "Eh?"
The kitsune is still laughing so hard he's tearing up. Nagisa bounces on her feet, unsure what to do.
"Ne, what's so funny?"
"You, kid. You're a riot. I heard your thoughts and my counterpart in the mirror confirmed some things for me, but I didn't expect you to just come out and say it."
She stills before vaulting forward. "You see your mirror self too?!" she says, gripping the bars of the cage.
He nods, folding his paws in front of him. His nine tails swish behind him in a way that reads as contentment to Nagisa.
"Not as often as you do. I'm conserving my strength, which is hard to do when half-sized human keeps drawing on my chakra reserves." Nagisa winces. "You got better," allows the kitsune when he sees her genuine guilt.
"Sorry, Kyuubi-san," she says, rubbing the back of her neck before bowing. Her twin pigtails swish in a way that is very reminiscent of the fox's tail movement.
"Call me Kurama. I can tell you're dying to do so. I'm not sure why you didn't."
"Well," she muses, "Naruto is Naruto but I'm Nagisa and a girl even if we share the same soul. I wasn't sure your name would actually be Kurama and I didn't want to assume, ya know."
"I have some theories about that, actually. If I'm reading this correctly, your soul reached out to your counterpart while you were still in the womb for some unknown reason. Many features are determined during this critical moment, it is possible that you unconsciously sought to distance your self from Uzumaki Naruto to avoid annihilation. This includes sex, hair colour, neural pathways. Even your chakra network potentially had to be reworked because of it. Everything except your soul."
Nagisa gulps. "If my body hadn't changed, my consciousness wouldn't have handled the bond?"
This makes her wonder if Suzume-sensei's terrible romance novels full of platitudes were right about the eyes being the windows of the soul. It might explain why this and the whisker marks are the only things she physically shares with Naruto.
"You were a foetus. Your sense of self wasn't even developed yet. He would have swallowed you whole and Kushina would have given birth to a brain-dead baby." He pauses. "I do wonder what caused the link to form, however. It is not something that happened on our end, but your counterpart has been fighting against "
Nagisa listens to Kurama ramble about different possibilities with fascination. This is easier than she expected. She thought she would have to spend months convincing the fox that she meant her word and that she would free them both. The idea that he's heard her thoughts for years is both mortifying and incredibly helpful.
Kurama seems to once more know what she is thinking because he gives her an amused look and stops theorising about the intricacies of space-time jutsu and the Edo Tensei.
"You said you planned to free me, kid, but how do you plan on doing so?"
"That depends what you want," she says carefully. "My first idea was to study Uzumaki clan fuuinjutsu and figure out how to open the seal without killing myself. It's the best plan and would grant you complete freedom."
"But...?" he asks leadingly.
"But later down the line, the missing-nin of the red clouds organisation Naruto fought in his timeline will come for you, and they have Uchiha. Doing this will make you free, but vulnerable. I could wait to free you until we're rid of them," she suggests, "but you would have to trust me to keep my word until then and you would still risk capture by others. Shinobi will never stop coveting bijuu's powers."
Kurama snarls. Nagisa stands strong in the face of his wrath. She empathises with the fox. As it is, the Kyuubi and herself are conflated in the eyes of the village, seen as weapons before they are people. She hates it, and promises herself that even once she has rebuilt Uzushio, she will never be that kind of Kage.
She remembers Naruto's memories of Nami. She knows she is needed there. A ninja village should exist to protect its civilians. The people like Manami-nee and the other survivors who ended up destitute after the end of Uzushio, like the civilians of Nami who ended up preyed upon by other nations and greedy businessmen like the one who hired the Kiri missing-nin Naruto once fought.
(Nagisa wishes her grasp on Naruto's memories was stronger. Then she would remember more names and more locations. She would be able to do more.)
It is a tragedy that this protection must be offered with steel and she hopes she can work towards world peace, but it cannot come at the expense of her people.
"And your other ideas?" asks Kurama once he is calmed.
"Send you to the summoning realm so no human can touch you without your say-so again. I'm not sure that would work," she admits. "But summons were normal animals who were sent to the spirit realm and evolved there, right? If we figure out how it was done, I can use the same technique and set you free."
The kitsune shakes his head. "You cannot. My siblings and I were the ones who created the spirit world in which the animals you call summons live. It is proximity to our chakra that granted those animals their cognizance and ability to manipulate chakra. It also resulted in them being hunted by humans, hence why we created this realm to shield them. We anchored the summoning realm to this plane in various locations which were later considered as weak points in their protection. The more adventurous animal clans made contracts with shinobi clans to exchange their service in return for their assistance in protecting those weak points. My presence in the spirit realm would potentially destabilise the whole structure."
"I didn't know," says Nagisa weakly, disappointed that her most viable plan is impractical.
Humans are really terrible, she thinks.
"Anything else?" prompts Kurama gently.
She discusses several other ideas with him, which he shoots down with patience. She has to resort to her very last thought, and the most distasteful one to boot.
"Or I could bind you to Uzushio," she says hesitantly. "Bijuu can be sealed into objects, right?" Kurama had said that was what happened to his brother Shukaku. "Sealing you to the land would give you your freedom and be more difficult for enemies to undo. You would have the freedom to roam and protect yourself and... the village I'm planning to build is one that would be willing to protect you instead of use you. I'd kill anyone who tries to control you, and I'd let you eat anyone who tries to go against that, ya know."
Kurama stays silent for a long time.
Nagisa stares, anxious. This is probably her worst idea. She's only proposing a bigger prison, not an escape. But she doesn't know what else can be done. She waves her hands at the Kyuubi, taking a step forward.
"We can also keep searching— I'm planning on learning all the Uzumaki sealing techniques, we can find something for sure, and if we don't, I'll invent it—"
"Don't fret, chibi. This is your most viable idea. Let me think on it."
At those words, Nagisa opens her eyes.
The prison seal is gone. Only her too familiar apartment remains, full of edible plants and orange potted flowers carefully arranged on the windowsill, a bed with a ratty cover painstakingly embroidered with the Uzumaki clan symbol and a painting of a crane framed on the wall.
It's the middle of the night.