(New Leaf) Multi-Interlude 2 (Patreon)

Kuoh Abandoned Church
(Friday, April 27th, midday)

Pale, slender fingers brushed along the back of a wooden pew as a woman stood in the middle of the sanctuary, her neatly manicured nails painted a glossy black. Her face was turned, tilted back just a tiny bit as her melancholic ruby eyes gazed up into one of the many stained glass windows, rays of light streaming through the depicted scene of a shepherd and his lambs. The beams of light shone off of her pale cheeks, contrasting with the dark eyeshadow and even darker lipstick artfully painted on her features.

The pitch-black burial gown she wore swayed lightly in an unseen breeze as she felt the residual presence of one of her distant brethren lingering in the hollow building. For all that the streaming light highlighted her face in the abandoned house of God, feathered wings of pure midnight hung to either side of her just out of its path, remaining to be touched by His light nevermore.

Click- tssskch

Click- tssskch, click- tssskch

"That was perfect, absolutely beautiful Miss Akatsuki!" A deep voice rumble-growled from a corner somewhere behind her. "I took a couple from slightly different angles, just in case."

The Tengu turned fully, pulling her wings back into her body for easier maneuverability, a satisfied grin on her lips as she broke character and dropped the carefully crafted pose she'd been holding.

"Thanks a lot for the help, Mister Kumakuma!" Akatsuki happily thanked the Onikuma youkai in appreciation as she walked over to him. "It wasn't too hard for you to handle without any opposable thumbs, was it?" She asked, accepting her phone back when he held it out to her, eager to look at the pictures he'd taken.

"Keh! As if!" The bipedal demon-bear shook its head, teeth bared in a facsimile of a grin of its own. "I'm a bear, what in the world would I need thumbs for, haha! No, any difficulty I might have had is nothing compared to getting to meet you in person randomly while walking the trail. Me'n the boys love watching your stunt-flying videos when we break into the public libraries at night."

"The pleasure's all mine," Akatsuki grinned, unbothered by the admission of a crime. He was a bear, after all. "It's always nice to meet fans of my hobby account. It's way more fun to make content for too, since all I have to do is film myself doing stuff I was probably gonna do anyways!"

"Kahahah! I like your spirit!" The bear rumbled, before turning. "Anyway, thanks for letting me be involved, but I probably need to get going about now. My girls can be total bitches if I ain't in my usual neck of the woods when they finally decide to get off their asses after each winter."

"Have fun!" She waved at the retreating form of the bear youkai as he re-entered the tree line, muttering about 'bragging to the guys'.

When she was sure he was gone, Akatsuki let her wide grin drop into the cold expression that felt more natural to her human form, crimson eyes narrowing and black-painted lips down turning into a line.

She and her brother had created these forms together a few years back, after he'd stumbled onto the "cultivation" genre of fantasy novels. While Akatsuki preferred her homeland's style of clothing– particularly her normal shrine maiden outfits– and it was a bit of a hassle holding certain facial expressions with this form's default features, picking a new face was definitely not an option she could bring herself to consider after all this time.

For all intents and purposes, this human form was hers and she liked the aesthetic, even if her resting-bitch-face was the bitchiest of them all.

She kept her senses observing the areas surrounding the old church even as she scrolled through the various photos her fan had taken for her. She'd been scouting the town for the past couple days while taking breaks from her mission, looking for interesting places to take pictures for her social media, and found the church early this morning during her post-breakfast exercise flight.

The thing that had caught her attention the most once she'd landed though, were the recent traces of another youkai in the area, not even a day old. Not just any other youkai either, but the young girl that was part of one of the local Devils' peerages. Akatsuki thought it was strange though, because while the white-haired girl was a total noob at Senjutsu, there were traces of her chakra leftover in the church, as well as signs that the surrounding area had a slightly lower concentration of natural energy than the rest of the forest.

The interesting thing about all this, was that the town's energy flow had shifted noticeably from its normal patterns for an hour or so the previous night. It was subtle enough and short enough of a shift that Akatsuki and her brother couldn't pinpoint the change by the time they noticed it through their passive senses, but the timing seemed to match up.

"Interesting…" She muttered.

What were the chances that the only other youkai with decent Senjutsu potential left in the town came to this church, seemingly at the same time that whatever is causing the energy disruptions in the region made a sudden and temporary shift, and the energy around the church shows recent signs of having been drawn on?

She spread her senses thin across the town to look for one presence in particular, and found him practically on the opposite side near the academy their host's attended. He seemed to be hovering near the very girl Akatsuki had been thinking of, observing her. With a flex of her aura, she focused and directed it towards her brother, doing the Senjutsu equivalent of poking him in the cheek to get his attention.

Within a moment, Yoru's aura reciprocated the gesture, and she felt the familiar sensation of his own energy intertwining with hers on a deeper level so they could convey their intents directly to each other.

They "spoke" as one, both unintentionally echoing the other's thoughts.

Found a lead.

…

…

… Bet I found mine first.

Nuh uh!

-----

Kuoh Academy
(Student Council room, late evening)

Rias groaned into her arms as she slumped on the table across from her long-time best friend, papers spread around her limbs.

Sona's eye twitched at the redhead's procrastinating. "Rias, you have no one to blame for this but yourself for not being more strict with your peerage. Finish your incident report and get out of my office already," the slim girl chided.

"Mou~" Rias pouted. "There's no way I could be any more strict than I already am with them, absolutely not." She shook her head. "I already punished the boys enough, any more would just be cruelty."

Sona looked up from her own paperwork with a half-lidded stare at her companion. "All you did was spank them," she deadpanned. "If what I know of him is correct, it's entirely possible that Hyoudou-san saw it as more of a reward than a punishment."

Rias averted her eyes sheepishly, scratching her cheek with a finger as she flushed slightly.

"Well, maybe just a tiny bit at first…" She shook her head in order to dislodge the memory of her pawn bent over her lap and instead focus on her rebuttal. She wasn't like Akeno, not one bit! "E-either way! I gave them a thousand smacks each, so by the end of it, both of them were begging me to stop! You can't say I didn't punish them enough after that much, even if Issei-kun's tendencies meant it took a bit more time to get to that point."

Sona was unmoved though. "Punishment alone isn't enough to deter bad behavior, Rias. You already know this, and we've already had this argument before, so I'll stop lecturing you for now." She shifted her head a bit, addressing something else she'd caught. "By the way, I can't help but notice you didn't mention punishing Koneko," the purple eyed girl pointed out with a raised eyebrow. "I was under the impression she was just as involved in this stunt as the other two."

"I thought about it, but I decided against it since the boys were the ones who roped her into it," Rias admitted. "She even asked Kiba if I'd okayed it at the very least, even if she ended up going along with it afterwards since Uzumaki-kun was already involved by then. It didn't really feel fair to punish her directly at that point, so I asked Uzumaki-kun to do it by proxy during their training the next couple of days, however he sees fit."

Sona's hummed curiously. "Uzumaki-san trains with her? I wasn't aware he was capable enough to keep up with one of ours to that degree. Did Yuuto-kun not handily defeat him while holding back significantly, just a week or so ago?" She had already read the reports of the previous night's events Rias had forwarded to her, but there was a league of difference between the strength of a trained [Knight] with [Sword Birth] and the no-name Fallen Angels the human blond had fought.

"Oh, right." Rias blinked. "I guess I haven't mentioned it to you yet, I forgot your side doesn't really interact with him much so you guys wouldn't know. Uzumaki-kun is from a secret ninja village where they learn to use chakra, and he used to be a Sage." Rias explained. "He's not training with Koneko-chan, he's her teacher. She asked him to train her and he accepted."

That seemed to surprise the prim and proper girl, an eyebrow lifting. "A ninja of all things, I can understand; the boy has a habit of seemingly disappearing any time I've tried sending my peerage to request his presence for me. A sage, though? At not even sixteen, and with his personality?" She questioned with some doubt.

"Former sage," Rias stressed, "And yes. He was apparently gravely injured about a year ago and lost the ability to use chakra. I've looked into his records, and while everything prior to it is flawlessly faked, I can confirm that he was checked into Kuoh's hospital on May 17th a year ago in critical condition, and was released in perfect condition just a few days later," Rias informed her. "I know you've used the Sight on him. With the progress Koneko-chan's made under his tutelage– in less than two weeks, mind you– she's confirmed that he has a sort of spiritual circulatory system that's been all but destroyed, and 'it's a miracle he survived it'– her words. On top of that, she went from neglecting her youkai abilities entirely, to successfully transplanting a Sacred Gear within two weeks! Even if there were extenuating circumstances, I didn't even know that was possible!" The redhead gushed excitedly. "The evidence all lines up, there's no way he could be lying!"

"Or it could be that you just want it all to be true, and much of that could simply be explained as Koneko-chan having immense talent even for a Nekoshou, but I see your point." Sona conceded with a sigh, not having any actual argument against it other than a healthy level of skepticism. She rolled her eyes behind her glasses. "I swear, if you put even half as much of your attention to your work as you do your Japanophile tendencies, you would have been done by now."

Rias's excitement dimmed a little at the reminder. "Honestly, I'm half-tempted to just hand it off to your sister, since she's the one in charge of external relations and this whole thing could still potentially go up in flames. On the other hand… Serafall."

The two girls shivered as one at the thought of how the sis-con Maou might have reacted to a rival faction sending what was essentially a sanctioned hit-squad to her "Beloved So-tan's" home territory.

"It's a good thing Uzumaki-san took down Mittelt non-lethally," Sona commented. "Without her testimony, we might have been left entirely in the dark as to whether or not this was a sanctioned Grigori operation, and one aimed at causing us trouble."

While Raynare had cooperated with Koneko at the time at Naruto's urging, it had clearly been to save her own skin. Unfortunately, that was as far as her compliance went, and when questioned about her activities, she refused to give anything away that would "betray Azazel-sama", with Kalawarner following in her leader's footsteps, the only difference being her loyalty was aimed at Raynare herself instead.

Which was annoying, because their careless monologuing and taunting had already revealed that her killing of Issei had been part of her orders, but not why.

Fortunately, unlike the other two, the blonde lolita had readily and gladly given up any and all information she had that they wanted to know, throwing her teammates and faction as a whole under the bus with the smallest prompting. She even gave them things they didn't want to know, such as the details of what she did in her free time when Raynare gave her breaks.

Apparently, the small Fallen knew exactly the kind of adult men her young appearance drew the eyes of. Attention that she reveled in, if her shameless, matter-of-fact claims were to be believed.

Rias grimaced a little thinking about it.

She shook it off a moment later. "In a way, it was an anti-Devil operation, and that's what makes it tricky. By killing Issei-kun, they would have removed the potential for the Devil faction to recruit the wielder of [Boosted Gear]. The fact that they came into our territory unannounced, without permission, and under our noses to kill a citizen under our watch, it's an overtly blatant attack on our interests and everyone will know it," Rias grouched. "But that won't matter, because they'll just claim innocence, that they did it 'as a matter of standard policy', and 'to ensure the safety of the humans in the town', all while pointing at random edge cases where Longinus users went mad with power! How did they even figure out he had a Longinus in the first place?! All we knew was that it was a Dragon-Type after weeks of observation!"

Rias slumped over again after her little rant. "Mouuu, isn't this too much? expecting us to navigate inter-factional politics at this age? I didn't sign up for this…"

Sona adjusted her glasses with one hand, causing the light to flicker off of them as she continued signing a document with the other. "Actually, you did sign up for this," she mercilessly corrected without a care. "You quite literally signed up to deal with inter-factional politics when you chose to manage Kuoh, as did I."

Rias glared half-heartedly at her friend from her place on the table, to no result as she went completely ignored.

"On a related note, how is Argento-san adjusting so far?" Sona smoothly switched topics. "I heard from Akeno that she accepted your offer after just a short talk with Hyoudou-san, but it can't have been easy for such a devout woman of faith to make that decision."

"It wasn't like it was that easy for her. She also spoke to Koneko-chan and Kiba-kun before deciding, and even then, it was a close decision," Rias corrected. "Other than that, she seems happy enough living with Issei-kun for the moment, but it's only been a day. It's still a bit too early to really tell." Rias sighed, rubbing a hand to her forehead. "That girl is much too earnest, and keeps trying to pray to God despite the headaches it's causing her. Half the reason she even accepted was because to her, her faith doesn't hinge on keeping her humanity."

Sona nodded. "I see." She said simply. And she did. Even when reincarnating her own peerage members fixed their problems, it still took some of them months to finally break down from the weight of their built up stress, once the immediate relief had waned and they'd settled into a new routine. The best that she could really do to help in those cases was just keeping an eye on them and letting them know she was there to help.

"You recently got a new member of your own too, right? Saji Genshiro if I'm not mistaken?" Rias questioned leadingly.

Sona nodded. "Recently compared to the rest of my peerage, yes, but he is still senior to Hyoudou. Why do you ask?"

"Oh, no reason in particular." Rias waved the question off innocently, before seemingly changing the topic. "The full moon is supposed to be particularly beautiful this coming Monday night… I can't wait to see it from the Familiar Forest with my peerage."

Sona's pen stopped moving.

Rias smirked at her friend and rival challengingly.

"..."

"..."

Sona glared.

"You already knew I'd been planning to go. Why in the world would I accept you going instead?" Sona questioned in annoyance.

"Because I have more members without familiars than you?" Rias replied as if it should have been obvious.

"Yes," Sona agreed, "and both of them are newer to being Devils than my Genshiro. He has had to wait longer than both of yours combined for this opportunity," she argued.

Rias flapped her hand dismissively. "Looks like we both have valid reasons to want priority. In that case, let's settle this through a competition!" Rias decided.

"Not a chance." Sona denied flatly. "It's already my reservation."

"What, are you scared that your peerage will lose to mine?" Rias asked with a haughty smirk. "It's only natural I guess, since my Issei has [Boosted Gear]," she said tauntingly, revealing her true plan.

"..."

Sona weighed her options, and threw out her least desirable ones.

Losing fair and square would be painful, but her pride would be hurt far worse letting Rias's comment slide.

"... You're on."

-----

Neighborly Heights Community
(Naruto's apartment, same evening)

'Kuro' the Totally-Normal-Housecat relaxed on the couch of her unofficial landlord, TV on and a mug of warm milk on the table in front of her while she sprawled lazily. Being a Totally-Normal-Housecat with no strangeness involved, she obviously wasn't wearing any clothes either.

That would have been weird.

After all, what kind of cat wears clothes when rubbing up against objects they're marking as their territory?

Especially after some nosy outsider is brought along as a guest of her sister's, and starts intruding on Kuro's turf?

A slender, pale arm reached out to wrap its perfectly manicured fingers around the warm mug, bringing it to the lips of the arm's owner to take a long, slow sip. After setting the mug back down, 'Kuro' shifted onto her hands and knees and stretched with a groan, her arms splayed out in front of her, spine curving and backside rising as her large chest pressed into the old and worn fake leather. With a few pops and a sigh of contentment, she released the pose and swung her legs over the edge of the couch to sit upright momentarily.

'I love you Shirone, I really do,' Kuroka began in her head, 'but your familiar is a spoiled punk with no guest manners,' she thought to herself in amused exasperation.

She had been minding her own business, snooping– Ah, exploring– in Naruto's room again the previous night, trying to see if she could find his porn mags in any new hidden compartments (he had a habit of randomly moving his various stashes of things around every once in a while), when she'd felt the familiar presences of Naruto and Shirone approaching from the sky.

They'd left in a real hurry earlier after the blonde had gathered his weapons, and it took only a moment during their return for Kuroka to notice that the boy's internal light had dimmed a decent bit again. He hadn't burned through even half of what she'd given him on Tuesday, but it was still a lot compared to what his body was naturally producing if she disregarded those strange pulses; none at all, that is. His body produced zero life force on its own.

The two teens had hung around downstairs for a few minutes, before her Shirone-chan ended up teleporting away. A cursory scan of the town showed that she'd gone to her apartment, presumably to go get ready for bed since it was nearing midnight and she had school the next morning.

Under that assumption, 'Kuro' had made her way downstairs and jumped onto the couch to curl up in her landlord's lap, intent on topping his reserves off again while getting some pampering in return for her efforts.

That was the plan at least, until a teleportation circle lit up again, revealing Shirone and that smug little shit Shiro sitting on her head.

It was admirably diligent of her sister to want to keep an eye on her friend, to make sure nothing like the previous incident happened while he was on his own, but it put Kuroka in a really awkward position. She'd had to simultaneously be on her 'best behavior' in order to not get caught acting suspiciously, while also watching as that annoying white kitten went around rubbing itself on everything like it owned the place!

On top of that, she'd felt her baby sister doing that strange thing with her chakra again while the two teens sat shoulder to shoulder watching anime together, but she couldn't actually study exactly what the younger girl was doing without using her own chakra and giving the game away.

In the end, she'd decided to take the easy way out and take a nap under Naruto's soothing ministrations, refueling her caretaker's lifeforce in the morning after Shirone-chan left.

Now that it was the next day, she devoted some time removing that interloper's scent from the home and replacing it with her own little touches.

Kuroka snorted at her own nonsense.

Really, it was just an excuse for her to laze around and do stuff while naked. Roleplaying as a normal cat was fun and all, but not that fun.

She got up and made her way upstairs to grab one of her kimonos from the guest bedroom's closet and get dressed, all the while sending her senses outwards to monitor the goings on of the town.

'As expected,' she thought with a small smile. 'The boy's been good for her.'

Just as she'd thought would be the case when he hadn't arrived home from school at his usual time, Naruto was hanging out at the arcade with Shirone. The two were in very close proximity, familiar lights that stood out in the epicenter of a glacially slow-moving vortex of energy. Before she'd stepped in to 'charge him up' so-to-speak, he hadn't appeared like much at all to her senses, practically invisible until he moved and even then appearing more like a moving corpse.

It was made all the stranger by the fact that she'd finally confirmed through proximity; Natural energy was being sucked into his body like he was a black hole, seemingly disappearing without a trace.

'If that's not tied to those weird pulses of energy that appear in his body out of nowhere, I'll take off my panties and eat them,' she thought, chuckling lightly at her little joke. She rarely wore underwear in the first place, so it's not like she'd actually have to follow through either way.

'Still though, I was almost certain it was one of those "bijuu" reforming, based on what Nyaruto-kun said back then…'

Kuroka thought back to the day she'd arrived in Kuoh just two weeks ago, when she'd spied on her sister receiving a lesson in chakra from someone she'd initially perceived as a nobody. Even without prior context, the little folk story and descriptions he'd given about his people's abilities had piqued her interest. Even if he'd shown no signs of capability himself at the time, she could tell that most of what he said was the truth as far as he understood it– a little fib about most other humans lacking the ability to use chakra notwithstanding.

Aside from being her little sister's friend and apparent mentor, that was half the reason she'd even decided to follow him around in the first place. For a supposed weakling, he carried himself in a way that made her want to figure out what made him tick.

'He certainly feels human, and believes he is as well, so it's unlikely that he's secretly some sort of bijuu himself.' Kuroka continued contemplating the matter even as she shifted the focus of her senses away from her Shirone's not-a-date, jumping onto the open windowsill in her cat form. Those uptight Shinto mystics were poking around the edge of town again, annoyingly enough. It seemed they'd decided to move on to the north side this time.

They'd been following a consistent pattern for as long as she'd been in Kuoh, semi-regularly showing up on the eastern outskirts during the night to make whatever preparations they believed needed to be made. Without any Senjutsu practitioners under the Five Clans employment to get a better sense of things, they were probably still grasping at straws with their roundabout and archaic methods, thinking the anomaly could be something crazy dangerous.

Well, that could technically still be the case, but Kuroka didn't think so. What was more concerning was the group having moved to the direct cardinal north of the town's center, after having been to the east. She'd been content to let them do their thing uninterrupted before, since she already knew from the old monster that they were doing their own investigations of the town. But if they were being that precise with the location they were doing it, there were only a couple realistic possibilities, especially if they moved to the west and south later on as well.

Large-scale rituals, and barriers.

Depending on what their purposes were, it could be entirely fine, little more than something to safely monitor the whole town accurately.

Needless to say, it could also be very not-fine.

She jumped from the windowsill and began making her way in that direction to investigate, sprinting through town as fast as her four short legs could naturally take her. Without enhancing herself in any way, her cat form was more or less the same as any normal housecat, so she'd seem to be nothing more than a particularly spooked stray to any onlookers, and still be fast enough to get to her destination in about ten minutes while enjoying the freedom of movement.

'Hmm, I wonder…' Kuroka turned her thoughts back to her Shirone. She remembered the way her sister's aura had stuttered when the boy had explained how a bijuu reforms, showing that she'd probably had a similar idea at first, but the tailed-beasts hadn't been brought up in any of the other few sessions Kuroka had spied on after that. Shirone seemed completely at ease with the situation just a few days later too, almost as if she knew more about it than she let on, around the same time she started doing that thing with her chakra that involved the boy.

Shirone would pour her chakra into the blond for a while, before pulling it all back having done seemingly nothing and leaving no lingering effects; at least none that Kuroka could perceive when she did her own checks on the teen, whenever he fell asleep later those nights.

'There has to be something I'm missing… some trick she figured out that I don't know, maybe?' The thought made her smile happily. Her baby sister was so talented!

That she'd gotten so good with her chakra so quickly, despite the years of neglecting it and the, frankly, very simple advice and training exercises the Uzumaki had given her. Not to knock on his knowledge and insights, but without being able to sense her mistakes or provide demonstrations, he filled the role of a mentor or supervisor more than an actual teacher.

He provided a set of goals, or the framework for Shirone to set a goal of her own, and then she did the rest of the work reaching them, only occasionally getting advice or clarification from the young ninja. He described what was possible and how his people went about it, and then Shirone would attempt to recreate it as best she could, and failing that, try to devise her own method of getting the same result.

It didn't take long, maybe five more minutes of dashing through the forest than she originally estimated, to reach the newly-made clearing that the various members of the Clans were bustling about. There was plenty of chatter going on as individuals wearing one style of robes called out orders to newly arrived people wearing a different style, and vise-versa happening further to the north, where she could make out members of the second group pulling equipment out of trucks to carry through the trees into the clearing.

There were many pallets of surprisingly modern-looking supplies sat haphazardly around the site. Things like fold out tables and chairs, backup generators, and even small-scale construction equipment of all things, such as shovels, rebar, and bags of concrete.

From Kuroka's perch in the branches of a tree a few layers deep in the tree line, she spotted what looked like the leader, or at least the project manager, sitting off to the side at one of the prepared tables with stacks of paper and a pen, two men of differing robes standing at attention and giving what sounded like a progress report on the unloading of equipment.

Given that everyone she'd seen so far was wearing clothing that followed three or four color and style patterns, Kuroka felt the odds were good that her hunch about these being members of the Five Great Clans was right.

She wasn't really read up on the minor details of that little faction, but despite all of them working together, there was a clear division of labor between the different families. Given that she counted four at maximum, chances were that the fifth family was either filling an off-site administrative and planning role for whatever this operation was… or they were being kept in the dark by the other four.

Once again, depending on what exactly this operation was, that could be fine… or have very not-fine implications.

It wouldn't be worth the risk revealing herself just to interrogate one of them, so Kuroka settled in to get comfortable with an irritated sigh, knowing that she'd likely have to keep coming back each night to get any useful info in the coming weeks.

People didn't just conveniently talk about their plans unprompted after all.

'And that idiot Bikou still hasn't come back!'

-----

???

In a place that existed within time but beneath space, there was contained a great ocean without beginning or end, one that slowly grew ever more as each moment passed. Within this ocean, there was contained a great beast which slumbered, one that dreamt of awakening once more, unleashing the ever growing tide of the ocean it contained within its grasp upon the world.

But it could not, not yet. To do so would destroy all in its path, including its very home beyond the ocean.

Its home that, even now, was little more than ruined fragments of a previous time. Continuously falling ever further apart in the beast's presence, even as it did what little it could to preserve it.

Stuck by disaster as it was, it was all the beast had left and it would not see its own carelessness washing it all away in the flood.

And so the beast slumbered.

Until one day, a young child entered the beast's domain. Unaware of the water's surface on which she tread, and even less so of the beast's presence even further removed from space itself, the child began exploring the edge of the ruins of its home.

Watching from a place the young one couldn't have fathomed, a titanic eye opened for the first time since its long slumber began, back when its home had been vast and welcoming and the waters ran freely, unconstrained by the floodgate of the beast's making.

The child would not stay for long, and so the great beast's eye closed once more.

But then the young one returned, once more simply observing another area of devastation, before leaving after doing nothing of note.

She would return many times after, each time coming closer and closer to the great work which held back the ocean, until finally, with understanding, and not a hint of desire or greed for what may lay behind it, she discovered the floodgate.

All under the watchful gaze of the titanic being beneath the surface.

Instead, the child surprised her spectator.

She began picking up the pieces closest to the hidden ocean, attempting to fit them together like a puzzle.

It was slow work, it was clumsy work, but day by day, piece by piece, the hints of the previous structures closest to the gate could be recognized. It was not enough on its own to rebuild, but it was a start.

The great beast came to understand and accept the child and her pure motivations. The girl would align the old and shattered frames, and it would provide the binding force, its iron grip holding the structures in place until they mended back together.

As the child left after the most recent visit, the great beast closed its eye once more, considering how much more progress would need to be made before it could finally enter the waking world in its entirety.

'Not just yet…' His mind grumbled.

Until it was time, Kurama would continue dreaming of his own greatness and freely flowing oceans of chakra, waiting for the moment he could greet his partner in full once more.

…

… And maybe berate the reckless dumbass a little.

…

… Okay, he would berate the idiot a lot.