Naruto POV:
"Time for a little contemplation," I muttered to myself, dropping into a crouch on the floor of my rundown apartment. I didn't sit; I perched, my heels off the ground and my knees pulled toward my chest. It was the habit of a mind that didn't quite trust the reality it belonged to.
The silence of the apartment was heavy, broken only by the distant, muffled sounds of a village that supposedly hated me. I ignored the layer of dust on the floorboards and closed my eyes. If I was going to survive in this world—no, not just survive, but dominate—I needed a full inventory. Not of my kitchen, but of my vessel.
I began what I called a Biological Audit.
In my previous life, I understood the human body as a machine of chemical reactions and electrical impulses. Here, there was a third variable: Chakra. But as I dove deeper into my own skin, I realized that my "machine" was operating on a level that defied standard human biology. I focused on my heartbeat. It was slow. Efficient. My resting heart rate was likely in the low fifties. It would be somewhat alarming in my world, but here, it was at most akin to an athletic feat for a five-year-old.
The Uzumaki Bloodline, I mused, cataloging the sensations. It's more chakra, sure, but it's also structural integrity.
I reached down and pressed a finger into my forearm, applying enough pressure to bruise a normal child. I felt the skin resist, the density of the muscle fibers underneath far tighter than they had any right to be. When I let go, the faint red mark vanished in seconds. My cellular regeneration was already in an overdrive state.
I wasn't just a "fanfic version" of Naruto; I was a biological apex. I was more Uzumaki than the canon Naruto ever was. My hair wasn't his sun-bleached blonde, but rather a deep crimson that practically screamed energy.
I have an edge, I thought. Efficiency. While others would have to train continuously for minor results, I could likely receive the same output with half the effort.
Poor Rock Lee.
I almost felt bad for the guy. Almost.
But a high-performance machine requires high-quality fuel and maintenance. I looked toward the bathroom. The lack of water wasn't just a nuisance; it was a tactical disadvantage. Hygiene is the first line of defense against infection and disease. Granted, as an Uzumaki, I probably couldn't catch a cold if I tried, but I don't take unplanned risks.
I stood up, my movements more confident as my mind mapped the specs of this new body. I needed water. I walked to the sink and began to dismantle the U-bend pipe beneath it with a rusted wrench I'd found in a junk drawer. The metal was pitted and cheap; Konoha's civilian infrastructure was a joke.
As I pulled the pipe away, a trickle of stagnant, brown sludge leaked out.
"Pathetic," I whispered.
The village wasn't just neglecting Naruto; they were actively sabotaging his living conditions. It was a slow-motion execution masked as bureaucratic oversight. If I had been a normal child, I would have died of dysentery or malnutrition years ago.
Honestly, I don't understand how the original Naruto could have forgiven these people. I'm not that sentimental.
"...maybe the pipes just clogged up? Yeah, maybe."
I stared at the sink. If the human body is 60% water, I was currently a high-performance engine running on a dangerously low radiator. I tried to push a microscopic needle of chakra into the rusted faucet, hoping to vibrate the mineral build-up loose.
CRACK.
The porcelain basin didn't just vibrate; it groaned under the weight of a spiritual sledgehammer. A spider-web fracture bloomed from the drain. I pulled back, my breath hitching. My control isn't just a lack of practice; it's a scale issue. Most academy students have a 'well' of chakra; I have an ocean. Trying to do fine-motor repairs with this much raw energy is like trying to perform watch repair while wearing oven mitts. Or, more accurately, trying to jump-start a toaster with a lightning bolt.
"Well," I muttered, rubbing the bridge of my nose. "That was a spectacular failure. If I keep this up, I'll be homeless before I'm six. I can't refine the flow yet, so I have to change the method. If I can't use a needle, I'll use the sledgehammer to power a different machine."
I made my way to my destroyed couch and lay down, twisting my back and legs to find a pocket of comfort. I closed my eyes, running through a mental simulation of every possible solution. My mind was a blackboard, and I began scratching out the variables.
Option One: The Atmospheric Condenser. I could use chakra to chill copper coils and pull moisture from the humid air. I discarded it within seconds. It was high-maintenance and energy-expensive. Latent heat of vaporization is 2260 kJ/kg. To get enough water for a bath, I'd be acting as a human battery for six hours a day. I'm a strategist, not a utility worker. I'm too lazy for a solution that requires a daily shift.
Option Two: Electrolysis. I could try to pull oxygen and hydrogen from the sludge and recombine them. I lacked the stable electrodes, and with my current control, I'd more likely create a localized hydrogen explosion than a glass of water.
Option Three: Solar Distillation. Simple, but the yield-to-space ratio was garbage. I wasn't turning my balcony into a salt flat for a liter of tepid water.
I needed something passive. Something that worked while I slept. The main line behind the wall was still pressurized; I could hear the faint, distant hum of the system. The valve was closed, but a closed valve is just a mechanical suggestion. I didn't need to force the handle. I just needed to create a path of least resistance.
Capillary action.
If I could bridge the gap between the pressurized side and my tap with a high-density, porous wick—something like specialized charcoal or treated ceramic—the water would seep through regardless of the valve's position. Gravity and pressure differentials would do the heavy lifting. I'd just need to scavenge the right materials.
The walk through Konoha was an exercise in ignoring the irrelevant. To these people, I was a walking disaster. To me, they were just obstacles in a low-resolution simulation. I stopped by a blacksmith's shop, hovering near the scrap bin.
"Hey! Brat! Get away from there!" the smith yelled, stepping out with a hammer in hand.
Oh great, an idiot, I mused. I didn't flinch. I just looked at him with a flat, bored expression. "The bin is over the property line, which makes this public waste. Unless you're paying a secondary tax for sidewalk storage, this is free real estate."
The man blinked, his brain clearly struggling to process the zoning logic coming from a toddler. While he was buffering, I reached in and snagged a discarded ceramic crucible and a length of porous clay piping. "Thanks a bunch," I muttered. I don't mind interacting with idiots though;they're easy to control.
Next was the market. I needed charcoal—activated carbon, to be precise. As I walked, I unceremoniously judged the architecture of the village. By my old world's standards, their buildings and roads were worse than most third-world countries. It wasn't just the infrastructure; the layout was extremely inefficient. It was like whoever built it purposely wanted the villagers to have a hard time getting around. Why were all the markets and stores extremely close together?
They most likely thought it was for convenience, but instead, they were creating a larger inconvenience for their customers. By being so packed, everyone bought their necessities here, which in turn created an extremely hard-to-traverse situation. That was currently why I was moving through dark alleyways in hopes no one spotted me.
The alleys weren't a workaround. They were a confession.
Narrow, crooked things that snaked away from the main streets like the village was embarrassed of them. Poor lighting. Uneven stone. No real drainage—just shallow grooves where water, filth, and whatever else people didn't want to think about slowly collected. And yet, somehow, this was still faster than the "proper" roads.
That alone said enough.
I kept moving, hands in my pockets, posture loose. No point looking tense. Tension invited attention, and attention invited questions. The villagers weren't observant enough to notice patterns, but they were very good at noticing things that didn't fit their expectations. A red-haired kid with violet eyes already pushed it. Acting strange on top of that would just be stupid.
I passed a cracked wall, moss growing between stones that hadn't been refitted in decades. No maintenance schedule. No standardized repair materials. Just patchwork fixes done whenever something became annoying enough to address. They had chakra; they could literally mold earth with their hands, and this was the best they could do.
The market noise bled into the alley like an infection—vendors yelling, metal clanging, people arguing over prices that were clearly made up on the spot. One economic nucleus for the entire village. One congested mess where food, tools, medicine, and weapons were all sold within spitting distance of each other.
"Convenient," they probably thought.
Idiots.
Convenience without flow management wasn't convenience; it was just concentrated stupidity. Everyone funneled into the same space at the same hours, creating predictable crowd surges and mobility dead zones. I could already see it play out in my head—panic spreads, someone trips, the rest follow. No emergency lanes. No crowd control barriers. No distributed supply nodes to reduce traffic. One explosive tag in the wrong place and they'd be scraping people off the pavement for days.
I turned another corner—because, of course, it curved—and nearly collided with a civilian carrying a crate that blocked half the passage. He muttered an apology like it was his fault the village planners had the spatial reasoning of a concussed raccoon. I stepped around him without a word. It wasn't worth correcting people who'd never connect cause and effect anyway.
The deeper I went, the more obvious it became: there was no real logistics backbone. No visible warehouses. No centralized storage facilities. No transport infrastructure designed for bulk movement. Everything was small-scale, individual, and inefficient. Each shop owner sourcing their own supplies, storing them wherever space allowed, praying nothing went wrong.
Just-in-time supply in a world where disasters happened for a living.
Brilliant.
Shadows passed overhead—shinobi hopping rooftops, careless and loud. Vertical mobility was one of the few things this place did well, and even that was half-assed. Buildings weren't reinforced uniformly. Rooflines were inconsistent. Some structures clearly weren't meant to be traversed at all, relying on the assumption that skilled shinobi would just… deal with it. And they did. Because that's what Konoha did best: outsource systemic failure to talented individuals and call it strength.
I caught my reflection briefly in a window as I passed. Violet eyes staring back, sharp and unimpressed. Naruto Uzumaki. Container. Orphan. Walking liability. Left unsupervised. I probably shouldn't be complaining—more freedom for me—but it was basically the equivalent of a president back from my world making nuclear codes public knowledge.
I snorted quietly.
They locked forbidden techniques behind seals and ANBU guards, but the jinchūriki of the Nine-Tails got social isolation and a slap on the wrist if he wandered too far. Either they were spectacularly negligent, or they were betting everything on fear and folklore to keep people in line.
Statistically speaking, that was a shit plan.
Ahead, a group of academy students laughed their way through an intersection, headbands loose, attention nonexistent. Children with combat training and zero escort discipline. No protected routes. No staggered movement schedules. No attempt to minimize exposure. If someone wanted leverage, they wouldn't need a plan. Just a pair of hands and basic timing. I took note.
The buildings shifted as I moved farther from the market core—residences stacked on workshops, storage rooms shoved between living spaces, flammable materials stored wherever they fit. Zoning clearly wasn't a concept anyone here respected. Everything overlapped, creating a village that relied entirely on mutual trust and the optimistic belief that nothing would go wrong at the same time.
A system built on vibes.
I paused at a corner, pretending to tie my sandal while listening. Footsteps. A patrol. Three shinobi—predictable pace, predictable route. They passed the alley entrance without looking in, a blind spot wide enough to drive a cart through. I counted the seconds between patrols. Too consistent. Too comfortable. Security like this wasn't meant to stop threats; it was meant to reassure idiots who thought the idea of guards was the same thing as actual safety.
Beyond the rooftops, I could see one of the clan compounds—wide walls, controlled entrances, space they absolutely did not need hoarded behind tradition and politics. Efficient little micro-states inside a village that otherwise choked on its own poor planning. Land misallocation. Authority fragmentation. Fantastic way to kneecap urban optimization. I wondered, not for the first time, how much of this village's design was the result of compromise instead of intention. Elders clinging to outdated layouts. Clans refusing to integrate. Leaders too scared of upsetting the status quo to enforce change.
"Because it's always been this way."
That sentence alone probably justified more corpses than any missing-nin ever had.
The charcoal shop appeared where I expected it to be—off the main routes, barely marked, relying on repeat customers and word of mouth. No signage standards. No supply chain coordination. Just another isolated node duplicating effort. I found a stall selling tea ceremony fuel. The owner looked at me like a cockroach that had just learned to walk upright.Yeah, that's one disgusting image, I thought.
"How much for the crushed briquettes at the bottom?" I asked, pointing to a bag of waste charcoal.
"Ten Ryo. And don't touch the good stuff with those filthy hands," he snapped.
I blinked. "What are the good stuff?" I asked, as I purposely grabbed a random item.
He grabbed the bag of charcoal and threw it at me. "Just leave, dammit! Before you contaminate the rest of my precious merchandise!"
Dumbasses.You've got to love 'em; they can make life so much easier if you know how to handle them. I left without a hassle; I got what I came for.
On my way back, I passed a notice board layered with overlapping papers—expired mission postings, faded warnings, outdated announcements. Information decay at its finest. No central update authority. No prioritization. Just noise piled on noise. If something important showed up here, it would drown before anyone noticed.
The village looked warm from a distance. Familiar. Alive. People mistook that chaos for vitality, like ants swarming around a dropped crumb and calling it civilization. I could almost see why. If you grew up in it, inefficiency felt normal. Inconvenience felt inevitable. Safety felt like a matter of faith rather than design. But I wasn't built like that. Not anymore.
From where I stood, Konoha wasn't dumb. That would have been easier to fix. It was lazy, complacent, drunk on its own reputation. It survived not because it was well-constructed, but because monsters and prodigies kept bailing it out at the last second. A village powered by miracles and poor planning. Dangerous, not because it was weak—but because it genuinely believed it was untouchable.
I adjusted the weight of the charcoal and continued on, cataloging flaws with detached amusement. Just small corrections, applied quietly, stacking efficiency on efficiency until the village no longer needed legends to function. Until then, I'd walk the alleys. Watch the flows. Map the blind spots.
If I was going to live in a village run by idiots, the least I could do was be the smartest thing moving through it.
Back in the apartment, I went into the zone. My five-year-old hands were a constant source of irritation; they lacked the span and the steady grip of my previous life. It was a hardware limitation that my software—my mind—found intolerable. I spent the next three hours drilling a microscopic hole into the main line's housing using a sharpened kunai and a lot of patience. I didn't use chakra for the drill; I used physics. Leverage. Torque. My small frame meant I had to use my entire body weight to drive the point home, my muscles screaming in protest. It was a reminder that even a magical ninja can be limited by the biology of a child.
Once the hole was made, I inserted the ceramic bridge. I packed the clay pipe with layers: crushed charcoal for chemical filtration, fine sand for particulates, and a final layer of porous ceramic. I sealed the edges with a mixture of tree resin and ash I'd prepared on the stove. I sat back, wiping a smear of grease from my forehead.
Now, we wait....
Drip.
A single, crystal-clear drop of water fell into a glass.
Drip.
It was working.
Capillary action was pulling the water through the filter-bridge, bypassing the closed valve entirely. It was slow, but it was constant, and the flow would gradually stabilize.
"Suck it, infrastructure," I whispered.
With the water issue addressed, I felt the itch to test the "hardware" again. The failure with the sink rankled. I needed to find the floor of my control—the absolute minimum output I could manage. I walked over to the one piece of greenery in the room: a dying leaf that had blown in through the window. I picked it up and sat back down in my perch.
The leaf exercise was a classic. Simple. Binary. You either hold the leaf to your forehead with chakra, or you don't. I placed the leaf against my skin and closed my eyes. I reached for that "ocean" of energy inside. I didn't want a wave; I wanted a single molecule of mist. I focused, narrowing my mental vision until all that existed was the point of contact.
Steady... steady...
The leaf stuck. I felt the connection—a tiny, invisible tether. But the moment I realized I was succeeding, my Uzumaki blood responded to my excitement. In my world, a dopamine hit was just a feeling. Here, it was a catalyst. A surge of raw power, unbidden and massive, roared up from my gut. The leaf didn't just fall; it disintegrated into ash against my skin.
"Bleh," I muttered to myself as I allowed myself to fall backward and lie flat on the floor. My control was ass. I can work with this, though. I glanced at the pile of leaves I had managed to round up. Let's grind.
I took another leaf and put it to my forehead, pushed a small amount of chakra towards it—the leaf stuck for a moment, before it was also burnt into nothingness. That was too much as well? Just how much chakra do I have?
I grabbed another leaf.
And another.
Another.
Another.
Once again.
One more.
Repeat.
Do it again.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Again.
"..."
This was extremely frustrating. It didn't matter what I did; I couldn't seem to send a small enough amount of chakra so that the leaf would just stick. So I changed my perspective. I adapted. I took a leaf, and this time I visualized a gateway—a limiter of sorts—being placed upon my chakra. I then took the smallest amount I possibly could and pushed it towards the leaf on my forehead, keeping it constant.
"Nice," I muttered, sensing the green against my forehead. The leaf had stuck, but it was slowly losing its adhesive property. I can't keep a constant flow for too long, it seems. I sent a small pulse of chakra to the leaf, planning on disintegrating it like the rest.
But something was different.
The force of the output was so sudden it felt like a physical blow to my brain. My vision swam. My internal "operating system" crashed under the sudden overclock. The room blurred, the cracked walls and the dripping sink fading into a white noise of static. I felt myself falling forward, but I never hit the floor.
I opened my eyes and didn't see the dust of my apartment. I was standing in a hallway. But it wasn't the damp, sewer-like basement I remembered from the anime. There were no dripping pipes or rusted bars. The walls were lined with endless, towering bookshelves that stretched up into an infinite darkness. The floor was polished dark wood, reflecting the flickering light of floating candles. It was silent, save for the distant sound of pages turning.
"A library?" I muttered, my voice echoing. "Well, it's an improvement over a sewer, I suppose."
I walked deeper into the stacks. The labels on the books were mostly blank, however, a few had the privilege of a title. This was my subconscious—a manifestation of my own mind's need for order and information. My brain had reformatted the 'sewer' into a searchable database. I moved forward, grabbing one of the books titled "Leaf Adhesion Exercise: Attempt Log."
The moment my fingers brushed the spine, the book slid out on its own. It opened without resistance, pages flipping rapidly until they stopped on a marked section.
● Attempt 1-17: Failure. Cause: Excessive chakra output.
● Hypothesis: Poor fine control due to abnormal chakra volume.
● Emotional state: Mild irritation escalating into spite.
I blinked. "…Oh. So we're doing this now."
The text continued updating as I watched, ink forming itself with quiet precision.
● Corrective action: Introduce artificial limiter via visualization.
● Result: Partial success.
● Remaining issue: Inability to maintain constant flow.
I closed the book slowly. This wasn't a metaphor. This was a live system—indexing, analyzing, categorizing my thoughts in real-time. A mental operating environment. No wonder the transition had felt like my brain blue-screening. I'd force-rebooted myself straight into admin mode.
"Figures," I muttered. "I finally get reincarnated and my head turns into a fucking wiki."
I slid the book back into place. It aligned perfectly with the others, the shelf subtly reshuffling to accommodate it. The library wanted order. Needed it. I could feel that much instinctively. I took a step forward. Rows stretched endlessly in both directions, shelves packed tight with volumes. Most spines were blank, but some bore faint titles, glowing softly as if awaiting attention.
"Language Acquisition: Polyglot- (English, German, French, Japanese, Spanish and Arabic)"
"High Degree Physics: Intuitive Models"
"Human Behavior: Pattern Recognition"
Hm.
So it wasn't just memories. It was frameworks. Ways of thinking. Mental tools I'd brought with me—or built unconsciously since arriving. I pulled out "Human Behavior: Pattern Recognition." The book opened to a diagram—crude, unfinished, but familiar.
Arrows connecting expressions, posture, tone. Probabilities scribbled in the margins.
| • Most people are predictable.
| • The problem is assuming they're rational.
"Still true," I said dryly, closing it.
As I moved deeper, the atmosphere shifted. The air grew heavier. The shelves taller, more oppressive. The candlelight dimmed, shadows stretching unnaturally long. And then I noticed something else.
Chains.
Black, thick, embedded directly into the floor and walls, snaking forward between shelves like invasive roots. Each link pulsed faintly, radiating pressure that made my temples throb.
"…Right," I murmured. "There you are."
The chains led toward a section of the library that was very deliberately not cataloged. No labels. No organization. The shelves there were warped, uneven, books shoved in at odd angles, some half-burnt, others bleeding ink that evaporated before it touched the wood.
A Restricted Section.
Of course.
As I approached, the pressure intensified. Not physical pain—psychological weight. Like standing too close to something vast and irritated. I stopped in front of a massive iron gate fused directly into the shelves. It wasn't a cage. No bars. No seals plastered everywhere.
Behind the barrier, a pair of eyes opened. They were horizontal slits of pure malice.
"So," a voice boomed, vibrating in my marrow. "The brat finally falls into his own head. And here I thought I'd be bored for another decade."
I didn't scream. I didn't shake. I just stuffed my hands into my pockets and looked up at the mountain of orange fur.
"You're louder than I expected," I said, my voice flat. "And you're shedding on my floors. We're going to have to discuss the boundaries of this shared living space."
The giant fox froze. The air in the library grew cold. "You... little insect," Kurama growled. "Do you even know what I am?"
"A massive source of energy currently acting as a squatter in my subconscious," I replied, tilting my head. "We have a lot to talk about, and frankly, I've had a very long day. So, let's keep the 'demon' monologue to a minimum, shall we?"
Kurama's lips peeled back, revealing teeth the size of adult men. The chains binding him groaned as his bulk shifted, shelves rattling in protest as raw pressure rolled outward like a tidal wave. Candles flickered violently.
"You stand before the Nine-Tailed Fox," he snarled, "a calamity that has leveled nations, and you speak to me of… boundaries?"
I glanced around as a book slid off a shelf and hit the floor with a dull thud. "See, this is exactly what I mean," I said mildly. "Property damage. We haven't even established terms yet."
The pressure spiked. For a brief moment, something old and instinctive stirred in my chest—the animal part of the brain screaming run. I acknowledged it, categorized it, and ignored it. Fear without utility was just noise. Kurama leaned forward as far as the seal allowed, his massive head lowering until one burning eye filled my vision.
"You will kneel," he hissed. "You will beg. You will curse the day you were born into this cage with me."
I stared back, unimpressed. "No," I said. "I won't."
That, more than any insult, seemed to unsettle him. I stepped closer. The chains strained, reacting to proximity, but I stopped just short of the invisible threshold where the seal's pressure intensified.
"You've done this before," I continued calmly. "Different body. Same village. Same setup. Loud threats, constant pressure, emotional sabotage. You destabilize the host, spike output, erode control. Eventually, they crack, and you get leverage." Given his reactions so far, I assume thanks to the seal, he can't see my memories nor out of my eyes.
Kurama's eye narrowed. "You think you understand me because you've read a few books?"
"I think," I corrected, "that I understand patterns. And you are painfully consistent." I gestured around us, to the warped shelves and the chains threading through the stacks. "You've already been tampering. Introducing noise. That dopamine surge earlier? That was you, wasn't it?"
Silence. Not denial. Interesting.
"You could have drowned me in it," I went on. "Flooded my system, burned out my control completely. You didn't. Which tells me something."
Kurama's tail lashed once, hard enough to crack the floor. "Speak."
"You're bored," I said flatly. "And you're cautious."
That earned a low, dangerous growl. "Watch your tongue, boy."
"Or what?" I asked, genuinely curious. "You'll kill me? That kills you too. You'll torture me mentally? Already accounting for it. You'll sabotage my chakra control so badly I blow myself up?" I shrugged. "Still mutual destruction. Terrible negotiation strategy."
Kurama stared at me for a long moment. The library seemed to hold its breath with him. "You are not like the others," he said finally, voice slower now. "They raged. They cried. They hated me blindly."
"I don't hate you," I replied. "That would imply emotional investment." I paused, then added, "You are, however, a liability."
That did it. The killing intent slammed into me like a wall, sharp and ancient and heavy with centuries of slaughter. Shelves buckled. Books screamed as their pages tore themselves free. For a fraction of a second, my vision blurred. Then stabilized. I exhaled slowly.
"See?" I said. "This is why you're bad at this."
Kurama recoiled slightly—not physically, but mentally. He'd expected resistance. Pain. Fear. Not… adaptation.
"You're powerful," I continued, tone clinical. "Absurdly so. But power without leverage is just potential energy. Right now, you're sealed, contained, and reliant on my continued existence to do literally anything."
I allow myself the smallest of mocking smiles, "That must be so humiliating."
The fox's lips trembled. "Careful," he warned. "Pride cuts both ways."
"Exactly," I said, and smiled. I took a step back, widening the space between us deliberately. De-escalation. Reframing. "I'm not here to dominate you, and I'm definitely not here to befriend you. I don't do Stockholm Syndrome."
Kurama snorted. "Then why are you here?"
"To negotiate," I replied. "Preemptively."
I snapped my fingers. A book materialized in my hand, heavy and bound in dark leather. The title etched itself slowly across the cover as Kurama watched: "Projected Outcomes: Host-Bijuu Interaction." I opened it. Pages filled with branching paths, probabilities, and annotated risks.
●Scenario A: Continuous Sabotage. Outcome: Host instability → Forced reliance → Eventual loss of autonomy for both parties. Probability of long-term freedom for Bijuu: Low.
●Scenario B: Non-Interference Pact. Outcome: Host stabilizes → Gradual increase in control → Potential renegotiation of seal terms. Probability of long-term freedom for Bijuu: Non-zero.
Kurama's eye flicked over the pages despite himself.
"You want out," I said softly. "Eventually. I don't care how 'eventually' is. Years. Decades. A century. But sabotage guarantees one thing." I closed the book with a dull thump. "You never leave." A calculated bluff.
The chains pulsed, reacting to his agitation.
"You presume much," Kurama growled.
"I calculate," I corrected. "And I adapt. You are a god-level engine trapped in a box designed by paranoid humans. If you keep thrashing, the box gets reinforced. If you don't… the box gets studied."
A pause. "…You would exploit me," Kurama said slowly.
"I would optimize the situation," I replied. "Including your interests, if they align."
The fox was quiet now. Truly quiet. The hatred was still there—dense, smoldering—but it had shifted from blind rage to focused appraisal. "And what do you want in return?"
"Short term?" I said. "You stop flooding my system. No emotional spikes. No chakra surges unless I ask."
"And long term?" he pressed.
I shrugged. "That depends on how cooperative you are."
Kurama laughed again, but this time there was no humor in it. "You think yourself clever," he said. "But you forget one thing, boy. I have eternity. You have a lifespan."
I smiled wider. "Then it's a good thing that I'm very efficient with my time."
The library lights steadied. The chains loosened by a fraction—not because the seal weakened, but because he stopped pulling. Kurama leaned back into the shadows, his eye never leaving me.
"Very well," he said at last. "I will… refrain. For now."
"Trial period," I agreed. "We'll review performance."
As I turned away, a new book slid into place on a nearby shelf, its title faint but unmistakable: "Nine-Tailed Fox: Conditional Non-Hostility Agreement."
I didn't smile. But inside, somewhere deep and quiet, the system logged the interaction as a success. Not because I'd won, but because, for the first time, Kurama hadn't gotten what he wanted either. And that meant we were finally negotiating on equal ground.
(A/N:I think I've found a manageable schedule, 1 chapter a week, but said chapted will be 3k to 5k words depending on how busy I am. Enjoy ♡)