(New Leaf) Canicular - Seirios Finale (Patreon)

“Yo.”

Uzumaki Naruto’s body stood with a casual posture and an uncharacteristically menacing grin, his spiky blond locks fluttering across narrowed, slitted, red eyes, as the oversized arm of burning energy retracted and shrunk to more human-like proportions.

“The name’s Kurama.”

The thing that stood out to Akeno wasn’t the change in eye color, the sharpened and extended canines shown in his grin, the sight of his whisker birthmarks just as thickened and wild-looking as he’d described the other day; it wasn’t even the sight of Koneko’s sixth tail seemingly piercing straight through his gut without coming out the other side.

It was the voice.

The words that came out of his mouth weren’t in Naruto’s usual energetic, high-pitched rasp, but instead a calmly-sinister, deep and gravely bass. It sounded like it came from right in front of her, despite being dozens of meters away. Not just that, but the sight of it speaking was off somehow, seriously uncanny. The words spoken didn’t quite line up with Naruto’s mouth movements, as if the being piloting his body was just poorly lip syncing what it had actually said.

A thunderous, rumbling, drawn-out boom rolled over the area, followed by a wave of wind that made Akeno and Sona reflexively brace and hold their own hair out of their faces; the aftereffects of the distant explosion finally reached the school grounds.

Naruto’s– Kurama’s eyes settled on Koneko’s berserk transformation, and the inhuman growl coming from within the skull mask was cut off as her whole body froze up with a jolt. With how deliberately she sat back on her haunches a moment later, “berserk” didn’t quite seem to fit anymore.

“Hoh? You’re resisting me taking my power back…?” Kurama's grin widened. “Feh! What a stubborn brat, just doing as you please! You sure know how to pick them, aibou!” Kurama’s tone calmed as he lifted Naruto’s hand with golden chakra glowing around it, and pressed the palm to the tail lodged in his stomach. “Too bad, fool girl. You’re already beyond your limit-”

A blur of movement.

A golden spear was closing in on his face. Koneko was racing toward the cadre on the other end of it, fist first.

A giant hand of red chakra slammed Koneko into the ground by the head hard enough to leave a full-body imprint, while Naruto’s fleshy hand flashed up towards the spear.

Sky blue energy twisted out of Naruto’s palm, mixed with flecks of red.

Particles of Light sprayed into the air in front of Kurama’s face, and Kokabiel landed lightly on his feet a dozen meters away, staring with narrowed eyes at the bright purple spinning orb that ground away the top half of his spear before he had jumped back. 

“Oi.” Red slitted eyes met red sclera with a glare as the rasengan slowed and faded away. “I was in the middle of something.”

“Any being that calls Uzumaki Naruto ‘partner’, and puppets his body at a level actually able to react to me, is not someone I wish to let power up even further,” Kokabiel stated seriously, tossing away the broken spear to dissipate and forming two greatswords instead. “So forgive me if I choose not to sit and wait. This will not be a fair fight; I will kill you and that boy, and ensure you both stay dead by any means.”

“MmrrRRA-!”

CRACK-THUMP!

Kurama shoved Koneko deeper into earth, shattering the bone helmet to grip her head between the ears and cutting off the beginning of a roar aimed at Kokabiel. She was crushed deep enough into the new pit that even her tails dropped out of sight, her sixth tail fully separating from Naruto’s body to follow suit.

“Khehahahaha!” Kurama laughed. “How amusing, this misunderstanding of yours!” He exclaimed jovially. “It’s usually the other way around for us, but Naruto’s chakra is plenty enough for me to defeat you! Regaining my own power won’t change the outcome of a clash between us, it will simply ease the brat’s mind that his little girlfriend is back to normal, safe and sound.”

Kurama bared his fangs. “Interfere again, and it won’t just be your wings that I cut short when I end this farce, little bird. It will be your life.”

“A counter offer;” Spears began forming in the sky above, behind, all around kokabiel by the hundreds, by the thousands. He lifted one sword to point at Kurama. “You may not care for their lives, demon, but as you just said, that boy will. Walk forward and impale your heart upon my sword. Refuse, and I will prioritize slaughtering every one of his friends around us as collateral, even should it make putting you down more of a chore. Do so, and I will spare all but my two targets; the Gremory and Sitri heirs.”

The chakra arm retracted from the still transformed Koneko, leaving her oddly silent in the pit hiding her form from view as Kurama chuckled darkly. “Heh, you bastard. You lie as easily as you breathe!”

Kokabiel smiled thinly. “It was worth an attempt.”

“Besides, you’re forgetting a few things-”

They both blurred into motion. Azure chakra blazed wastefully from all of Naruto’s tenketsu like an aura of fire under Kurama’s rusty control of his reinforcement, while Light spears fell like God’s Judgement had arrived.

An underworld-forged straight sword slid out of the blonde's belt to parry one of Kokabiel’s swords, while the cadre’s other weapon was busy deflecting Kurama’s extending fist. Naruto’s cane-sword shattered on contact, the forces applied proving too much for it to handle, but it did its job well enough for Kurama to drop the handle and lunge for Kokabiel’s chest. 

“First, what collateral?!” Kurama cackled as the Fallen twisted away from Naruto’s knife-hand. Almost like a filter over the senses was lifted at his words, the moment the first of the falling spears impaled Akeno, the red haze that filled the world disappeared in a blink, along with all the visible devils, who all reappeared unharmed alongside the human sorcerers, all with Kuroka at the helm of a giant magical barrier– one that was handily weathering the storm. “The only target in your reach is right in front of you, khehehahahah!!”

The ground shook as the Light missiles struck empty earth and a barrier created by an Ultimate-class level magician.

Kokabiel snarled as he and the possessed teen clashed dozens of times across dozens of meters in a single second, having not noticed the extremely subtle illusion the nekoshou criminal had cast until it had just been broken. He had been played.

It was as he thought; regardless of the fact Kokabiel doubtlessly held the advantage in sheer energy, the nine-tails was dangerous even at a blatantly reduced level, missing six of its tails. The synergy between the demon and Uzumaki Naruto’s body must have been monstrous, to be able to push him physically even now. 

Every one of the creature’s punches parried, every kick dodged, and every slash from the unnaturally extended nails on the human’s fingertips blocked, and yet no matter that he hadn’t been struck yet, nothing Kokabiel tried was getting through either.

He was the one being pressured by the constant aggression of his opponent dictating the pace.

Normally he would at least have the reach advantage with his natural height and his weapon against an unarmed enemy, but even that was mitigated by the crimson energy arm that could extend and retract at will, leaving the human with the advantage of his smaller size making him a smaller target.

That was the problem with judging combat strength by power levels; it was an amateur mistake made by people who’d never been punched in the face at Mach 5 and beyond, and it was one that Kokabiel would not be caught dead making. Some warriors eschewed all types of mystical energy and simply hit harder.

Claw-like nails raked across the flat of one sword while his other stabbed forward in a guard counter that Kurama’s energy arm positioned itself in front of. Kokabiel’s Light stabbed into the dense energy like it was a solid object, and came to a stop halfway through, before the glowing arm extended to the side to grip his blocking sword by the blade.

‘How in the world is it doing that!’ Kokabiel seethed internally as he took a step back, dismissing both of the bound up weapons to create new ones, warding off another retaliatory swipe by redirecting a barrage of spears his way. ‘It’s a nine-tailed fox youkai! A demon of hatred even, while separated from most of its power to boot! I should have the elemental advantage here, so how am I not cutting it through!?’

It wasn’t even that the demon was strong enough to resist the Holy energy like the four Maou could. Logic, experience, and every one of his current senses told him he should be handily dismantling the dark creature’s most versatile and expendable limb with every swing, nullifying it with every block, and yet every time his blades made contact, it was as if his Light had no effect beyond the normal unnatural sharpness that applied against all beings, regardless of light-to-dark alignment. Even God’s death wouldn’t explain this seeming glitch in the system.

“And second-!”

Kurama weaved through the rain-like assault of spears with the ease of someone who had survived much more dense and dangerous attack spams in the past, appearing in front of the much taller man with a fist cocked back, right as two more swords formed in Kokabiel’s hands.

Naruto’s palm flew at Kokabiel fast enough to ignite the air, slamming a purple Rasengan uppercut into a hasty cross block and throwing the Fallen a football field away into the air before he stopped himself with his wings. It only bought a single second of time as Kokabiel flew back in like a streak of light himself, glowing with his Holy Power fully unleashed, but Kurama made that second count.

Despite almost all of Naruto’s injuries being mostly healed, the missing arm was still a problem in both the short and long term. Naruto had never lost an arm before and had no experience moving that way, so his body’s natural balance was thrown off enough to make Kurama’s less-experienced control of it just a tad less responsive than he’d like.

“Who said I needed skin contact to take my chakra back?!”

So Kurama decided to fix it, and if Naruto wanted to complain later, the brat could chop it off and make one himself.

Kurama grinned as two whole tails worth of his chakra flowed through the space where Naruto’s right arm used to be, gathering and condensing into a familiar shape like first nature, enhanced by the knowledge and experience gained working with brat to fight Kaguya. An arm rose, with lean, angular joints and covered in wild, red-orange fur. Kurama pointed his clawed finger at the rapidly approaching Kokabiel.

He watched Kokabiel’s eyes widen as a dark purple sphere the size of a fist appeared at the tip of his claw inside that split second.

He watched Kokabiel realize his error, the fact that an attack that took a berserk Koneko entire seconds to create and fire for the first time ever… Kurama, the original source of her current power, could do it all in the blink of an eye while wasting less power.

Super Mini-Bijuudama!

He fired the tailed-beast bomb not as a ball, but as a beam.

There was no time to dodge, no chance to block, and no projectile to deflect.

Twenty meters in diameter, Kokabiel barely had time to twist away from the center of the approaching death, his expression one of panicked wrath as most of his body was engulfed in the destructive light that lanced into the sky, only his upper left wings sticking out unscathed. His scream of rage was downed out by the roar of rushing power.

The barrier surrounding Kuoh glowed brightly as the attack slammed into it, rapidly shifting technicolor hues spreading from impact as it dispersed the attack’s energy across a vast invisible surface to safely siphon away.

Kokabiel breached the perimeter face-first, his broken and scorched body smoking as he shot limply out of the attack and slammed into the ground.

Kurama lowered his hand, watching in satisfaction as the man tried shakily pushing himself up with one arm.

Kokabiel’s previously smooth skin was cracked and blistering where it wasn’t stripped away wholesale, the flesh of his right cheek melted away to the point his scorched-black molars were exposed. His right arm was missing entirely up to the shoulder, while his right leg ended at the knee, never mind the exposed muscle tissue. The suit he’d worn had practically disintegrated, showing off the burnt and bloody skin of his torso. The only parts of his body that seemed to escape with minor damage or none at all were his twelve wings, the ones that didn’t get clear in time being encased in extremely dense layers of protective Light, Light that only just began to shatter and fall away.

Confirming the state of the battlefield with his senses, Kurama turned and began walking over to the timeout pit he’d left the brat’s girlfriend in.

“w-whait… y-you bashtard…”

Kurama didn’t, crouching at the lip of the crater and looking down

The moment he did, the transformed face of Koneko snapped up to meet his gaze from where she sat, patiently waiting still until she perked up just now.

Her four tails began swaying. Kurama smirked

“I sshhaid whait, damn you! Don’ tchurn your back on mhe!”

It was amusing to see the cat girl so influenced by his own canine nature that her tails wagged when she saw her mate’s face. Not that he did such a thing when he was happy, of course. He was Kurama, the strongest of the nine. Such a base act was beneath him.

What was slightly less amusing was the jackass still thinking it wasn’t already over.

He glanced at the Fallen over Naruto’s shoulder with a single eye, before turning back to his current priority as the girl jumped out of her hole to land beside him.

“Don’t push it, little bird. It’s over.” Kurama grunted. “I really will clip those wings if you do. I don’t care if I cause an incident, that’ll be Naruto’s problem to deal with.”

The man was hovering above the ground, his wings carrying the burden his shredded body couldn’t, and a cracked and dull silvery arm attached to his ruined shoulder with a fresh Light sword in hand.

Kokabiel glared with a mixture of hatred and burning determination. “Itsh not over untchil I whin or die!”

Kurama rolled his eyes, completely unconcerned as Kokabiel flew at his back. “Tell that to these guys.”

As he reached down to Koneko, Kokabiel’s eyes rolled into the back of his skull and he fell out of flight, straight into the waiting clutches of a suddenly appearing Kuroka. A short distance away from her, a stylishly dressed teen male with silver hair lowered into a hover on a pair of armored blue and white wings. A pair of well maintained dress shoes tapped on the packed earth as they approached Kurama from the front.

Koneko tensed and growled at the three new arrivals, but with a single touch of his hand to her shoulder, Kurama unraveled her death grip on his chakra and stole most of it back. Almost instantly the tails and crimson chakra-flesh slid away from her suddenly unconscious form and absorbed into his own, while it was the work of seconds for him to regrow fresh layers of skin over her exposed muscle tissue with some of the chakra he left within her.

He smirked in amusement as he cradled her nude body to Naruto’s chest.

His idiot partner was going to make such a fool of himself when he resurfaced…

“So you’re the guy everyone’s been running around like headless chickens for all these months.” The third newcomer stopped a few paces away. “Or not just you, I suppose. It’s two of you in there, am I right?”

Kurama glanced at the person as he stood up, taking the visual measure of the being he’d sensed observing the spectacle.

About as tall as Kokabiel, with short brown hair that was dyed blond at the fringe, and a short brown goatee. One of his hands sat casually in the pocket of a high-collared, burgundy trench coat that had a deep v-neck showing off part of his chest, belted at the waist in a way that left the bottom to flair out around his slacks like a cape.

“Thanks for the assistance, by the way.”

The man had narrow-set eyes and the kind of sleazy-looking lazy grin that just pissed him off for some reason, making him want to punch the smug sounding bastard in the face.

“The name’s Azazel, Governor-General of the- phteh!?”

So he did.

Kurama woke up from his nap early to save everyone’s asses, now it was Naruto’s turn to deal with the fallout.