Disclaimed

Chapter 12

Ninja, Harry decided, sucked. Not as in they were bad at what they did, but as in they were annoying. The one he was fighting right now was too fast to hit, too strong to simply wait out, and generally too everything to take out with anything short of large scale destruction.

Or... he could just use magic. Because if there was one thing magic was good for, it was breaking the rules. So the next time the ninja tried to do a hit and run, Harry apparated to behind him before flinging a stunner at his back. The ninja dodged (of course he did, he'd been warned by the noise), so Harry followed up with a flat out barrage of spellfire, flowing from one spell to the next until the whole battlefield was covered in brilliant lights.

Each spell was weak, but without shields, not even a Body Flicker or a replacement could bring the man out of the barrage in time, and he emerged from it with jellied knees and rampantly growing teeth.

Harry bared his own in a cruel smile, channeling what he remembered of Voldemort to try to look as intimidating as possible (because whatever else you said about the man, he could be terrifying even when he looked like a magical experiment gone wrong). "Surrender." He hissed, letting a bit of parseltongue leak into his voice, "For I am the Master of Death, and you are simply mortal."

The ninja threw a knife at him.

It had been almost three months since Sirius had awoken in Orochimaru's lab. Three months since he made his deal. Three months of experimenting, trying to find the limits of his abilities, and how they interacted with those of the ninja who already resided there. And three months of finding out that he'd been going about things in the wrong way.

He'd been trying to fight like a ninja, when, simply put, he wasn't very good at that. A spell moved quickly, but if a ninja saw it coming, it wasn't too much harder to dodge than any lightning technique. A cutting curse wasn't too much worse than a knife. A blasting curse, was just an explosive tag, but without the tag. Combat spells from home weren't devastating simply because people here had been raised around them.

What worked was joke spells. Prank spells. Non-lethal ones, modified to affect large areas, at the cost of power. But unlike at home, where power was important, here, power was irrelevant. Because here, magic didn't exist.

He'd never really known what that meant, because his world didn't have scientists studying magic, and finding the idea was laughable! Muggles trying to decode the ideas behind magic? The purebloods would likely start tossing around unforgivables for it! But with Orochimaru, well, it was the only way to get things done, because the somewhat humorous man was first and foremost a scientist.

At home, everyone had magic. Well, everyone he ran into anyways. But here it didn't matter how much energy it took to break your curse, because no one could manipulate the energy like that anyways.

A full body bind could be broken with a simple finite, but finite here wasn't simple. It wasn't even possible. A body bind was the equivalent of permanent paralysis here. A stunner? It lead to a coma. Minor transfigurations would scar someone for life. After all how could they fight or even act when their hands had been turned into frogs?

So the problem, as it always had been, was hitting. At home, the problem had been shielding spells, which had to be shattered with raw power or exhausted with a barrage. Dodging was simply for between shields. Here, they dodged almost everything.

So how to fix that? Area effect spells. Spells that could strike the entire battlefield, even if they didn't strike particularly hard. Because Sirius's "Not very hard" was still enough to disable, and in a fight, being disabled was asking to be killed.

So Sirius made spells. A dancing curse that flew out in a massive cone, leaving nowhere to dodge except behind scenery. A blindness spells that would never penetrate a wizard's shield but flew at almost the speed of thought. A foot-to-hoof transfiguration that didn't create light, but could be countered by almost any spell that affected the feet. A spell to make someone grow hundreds of heavy feathers, but modified to hit a large area in return for lasting until the target exercised his own magic, their power overriding his. Spell locking was worse than useless, an active waste, no one could counter his spells anyways. Instead, all that mattered was what the spell did, and how likely it was to hit.

And now? Now his arsenal had been fixed, he knew how to fight ninja, he'd managed to get one of Orochimaru's spies to put a portkey anchor back at his house (A bit of legilimancy had taken care of Orochimaru's orders to the contrary), and he'd stolen every little bit of information that Orochimaru had about Harry (And apparently Naruto and Ino, who'd idiotically left the village and gotten themselves declared missing-nin. He needed to go drag them back.) It was a good thing you couldn't use an unbreakable vow on yourself, or this might have actually been a problem.

Kyuubi POV

Kurama snarled in fury as the idiotic child fought back again. Didn't he know when he'd lost? Why wouldn't he just stay locked up? Complaining about things being 'Not fair' and him being a 'body thief'. How did the human keep living anyways? He was supposed to be nothing more than a corpse! Even if he'd once been a person, he was dead now, dead and gone, and why did eating people not work any more? First those brothers who'd tried to eat their way out of his stomach, now this annoying child? How DARE he?

"You okay?" The blonde girl beside him asked cautiously. He glanced at her, letting out a grunt.

"I am fine." He grimaced.

"You've been snarling every five minutes." She pointed out, sounding worried, "I'm telling you this... blending you did, whatever it was, it's dangerous. You're acting... wrong, if that makes sense?"

"I am fine." He snapped, then sighed as she flinched. "Sorry. It's just... you know. Kyuubi. And it's too late now, we're blended."

"And it was a stupid idea, and Sasuke's going to kill you when he finds out about it." Ino frowned. Kurama twitched.

"I did it to protect him. I need to bring him back." The demon hissed.

"Hey, we're going after him, aren't we?" Ino said, her own voice slightly terse. "I'm just saying, we're both ninja! We've got his little surprises. We don't need the firepower that you're bringing us for now. You could have waited until we were closer. As it is, our chakra trail is a bit obvious."

Kurama growled, but couldn't argue. His own power was so much more than most, of course it was easy to find. Again, he wondered why he'd bothered to even listen to his warden. Talking to people always lead to bad things happening. Which was why he was ignoring the human, even now. Although... huh. How was the human managing to talk to him anyways? He shouldn't be able to. Or at least, he shouldn't know how to, which really amounted to the same thing. Although now that he considered it... hm. Actually, talking had got him out here...

"I need to take a break." Kurama grunted. "To stabilize. Try to pull my power back in. Give me a minute."

"Why didn't you do that a few months ago?" She demanded, annoyed. Kurama gave her a glare.

"I couldn't. Now I can. My power's sufficiently... calmed."

"Your chakra flares keep lighting trees on fire." She glared back. "We've actively antagonized at least three missing villages, and we've had to go missing nin to avoid this being tracked back to the leaf. And the leaf itself keeps sending hunter-nin after us, because they want their jinchuuriki back. And you keep assaulting them as well."

Kurama just grunted again. "Just give me a minute." He snapped. "If this works, it should fix all of our current problems. Besides, my appearance will change back to normal, so it's not like anyone will be able to blame us."

"Good." She said firmly. "Because your demonic fox features and hair made of fire are really damn obvious."

"I noticed." Kurama snarled back, before taking another deep breath. "Sorry. Let me just... talk to him."

"Who?" Ino immediately turned suspicious. "I thought you two blended?"

"That's the explanation that makes sense." Kurama agreed, "But the kyuubi is a beast made of pure chakra. Blending is different than you'd expect. Let me get our... problems fixed, and then we'll worry about it."

"Fine. But I want a proper explanation when you're done." She scowled, but finally shut up. Now if only he could make his warden do the same...

He closed his eyes, sinking back into his mindscape. He'd closed off all of his senses from the boy, as well as his thoughts. How the little thing could make himself heard at all, he couldn't imagine.

"You're still alive." Kurama said impassively, staring down at the tiny blonde ninja.

"Hell yeah I am!" The blonde shouted back from the other side of the bars "And-"

"Then why are you not in control? Why have you not contacted me?" Kurama demanded, letting his lips form into a snarl, "Do you know how much damage control I had to do? You are now a missing-nin, and have three villages attempting to murder you because I have insufficient control while in your body to prevent my chakra from destroying my surroundings!"

"I- er- but- but you put me here!" The boy protested. Kurama snorted. He hadn't shoved the boy into the prison, he'd eaten him. But apparently, the seal had some sort of security that he'd missed.

"No, you put yourself there." Kurama corrected. "Now get back into your body. Your friend thinks that we've blended, and that's why your abilities were so... unusual. Now that you have messed up so thoroughly, I will be able to speak with you perfectly."

Okay, so he'd lied a bit. The result was the same though, and this way, the child was more likely to trust him, and let him get into the shadow clone. Why he'd thought being limited to a pathetic human body was a good idea was beyond him. Their... biology! It was utterly disgusting.

"So... you didn't mean to steal my body? And- and lock me in here?" The boy asked, his eyes leaking.

"As if I would bother." The demon replied dismissively. "I will restore you to control. Do not lose it again. And make a shadow clone, I need to possess it. This time, I suppose I shall have to expend effort keeping you from falling back into the seal."

"But-" The boy hesitated, quite reasonably not trusting him, but also not being able to figure out his angle. Which made sense, because Kurama wasn't even sure what he was doing. His mind was still fractured, his sanity unstable from being torn in half by the shingami. "But if you want freedom so much, why are you getting back in your cage?" The boy asked, suddenly figuring out what he wanted to ask.

"I'm not." Kurama replied bluntly. "I've formed a permanent link when I burned through your mind to find your consciousness" Blatant lies, but the boy wouldn't know better, "You'll lose a couple memories" namely the ones that would make the child mistrust him "but I'll be able to use that path to possess a shadow clone at will." Okay, that was true, though not for the reason he'd implied.

"Okay." The boy nodded, then let out a yelp as Kurama threw him back into his own body. Now he just had to figure out what had gone wrong.

AN: Okay, significantly shorter than most of my chapters. This is more of an interlude, because I'm going to be disappearing for a bit (college is being... annoying), and wanted to get this out first. Apparently I lied last chapter. Naruto isn't dead. Reviews seem to have made my muse reconsider.

Also: I have bad grammer. I have bad spelling. I am aware of this. It's a result of my growing up in a household that's not exactly good at english, and mostly speaking bengali at home. It's why I recently got a beta. I'm planning on going back through this story and fixing stuff up with him before I continue it, so... uh... ignore a sudden fluctuation of updates, if it does that when I edit them. Sorry about that if it does. Probably not actually continuing until for a couple months at least.

Final Note: Kurama is crazy right now. It's the result of being torn in half by a death god. He's not making decisions well. Thus various, self contradictory things that he's done.

Nothing else to really say here. As per usual, any information given is limited to what that particular character knows/considers important. And also, other characters lie. A lot. Also, have questions or something you want to say? Please leave a review or PM me or whatever. I'll try to get back to you ASAP.