Backslide-Blackkat

Chapter 11

Naruto narrows his eyes in concentration, focusing on the piece of paper in front of him. The apartment is quiet but for the intermittent patter of rain starting up outside. Kurama had mentioned training for a few hours before dinner and left with his katana, but even without him the apartment still manages to feel warmer and cozier than Naruto's ever has.

Part of it could be that Naruto's stuff has migrated onto the bookcase and is filling several new shelves around the main room, or that the door to his new bedroom is propped open and he can see Gama-chan perched proudly on the desk from where he's sitting. Or maybe it's that Kurama made him cocoa and brought home dango for him, without Naruto even vaguely hinting that he wanted either.

This, Naruto supposes, is what it feels like to have a dad. Except that Kurama is more easygoing than any of the dads his friends have complained about, more apt to let Naruto decide everything on his own, and then be there with congratulations after a success or sympathy in the face of a failure. He has his own life and his own duties, but he still takes a moment whenever he can to be kind, to do simple things that no one's ever done for Naruto before, and it's simultaneously amazing and completely bewildering.

So, for Kurama—and for himself, because this stuff is actually pretty cool—Naruto is reading. Has read three entire scrolls on basic sealing that even genin can do, and Kurama has finally given him leave to test it.

(He probably didn't mean for Naruto to test it while he wasn't present, but he never specified, and Naruto's done with the scroll and fairly confident in his abilities, so why not?)

The outline of an exploding tag is growing under his brush, smooth and slow. Everything he's read has been incredibly explicit about not hurrying, and as much as Naruto would like to, he also doesn't want to blow up the whole apartment, so he's careful as he sketches out the seal and then inks it.

Exploding tags are one of the things that every shinobi uses, and even Naruto has used them before, learned at the Academy, but most ones bought pre-made are actually really boring. Like this, Naruto can tweak the seal to change how much smoke there is, or how much fire, or how much noise. Basic exploding tags all have about the same strength, since that's just how the seal is, but that's fine, because it's really the extras that get people instead of the force. Smoke and bangs and all that—that's what really confuses an enemy.

And now Naruto can make his own.

There are really no words for how awesome seals are.

Just as he's about to put the finishing flourish on the upper-west quadrant, though, the door opens, and his cousin calls, "I'm home! Naruto-kun, did you burn the house down yet?"

Offended at the implication, Naruto jerks his head up and cries, "Kurama-nii!" in a wounded voice.

But the jerk of his head is echoed by the jerk of the brush in his hand, and a jagged streak of black cuts through three quadrants at once. Naruto blinks down at it for a moment before the implication registers, and then his eyes go wide.

"Naruto-kun, I—oh, whoops."

Before Naruto can so much as open his mouth to cry a warning, a calloused hand closes on the back of his shirt, plucks him neatly out of the way, and drops him onto the sofa. Kurama drops to one knee, slams a palm down on the ruined seal, and speaks a word that makes Naruto's ears ring. There's a flash of light, a sound like metal tearing, and then dead silence.

Naruto rubs his eyes to clear away the spots, and the world slowly resolves into the still-intact apartment, with his cousin kneeling in front of him with one red brow arched. He looks more amused than angry, thankfully.