Shadowed Sun

Epilogue

I tucked my hair behind my ear, my eyes scanning over the mission report. When I was satisfied with what was written I handed it to my brother.

Naruto sat behind the Hokage's desk, his brow creased in concentration as he read over the mission report I handed him.

It had started off as a simple C-Rank mission, but it had escalated into an A-Rank quickly. Konohamaru had dispatched for help the second he realized his Genin were in danger, and I had been sent out to assist him. The foolish missing-nin didn't stand a chance when Kurama and I entered the scene.

Naruto gave a long sigh when he was done and shot me a jealous look. "I just now realized I always give you two the good missions."

Kurama cocked his head at him, pulling back his lips in a cocky smirk, his ears twitching. "It couldn't possibly be because we're simply the best suited for them."

Naruto huffed at him, and Kurama's tails waved about, as clear amusement rolled off the fox. "Whatever, pipsqueak."

Kurama, at the moment, was roughly the size of Akamaru. At any moment he could push out more of his chakra from the seal and grow to his full size, but everyone in the room knew he wouldn't do that. For one thing, when he was at his true size, it made going about the village far more difficult than necessary. Moreover, whenever we went on missions together, if he was that big, anyone could see him coming. Kurama could shrink or grow his size as much as he wanted to. For the time, he was satisfied with his current size, though.

Finding a way to 'free' Kurama and the other bijū from their jinchūriki had been a tricky thing. Surprisingly, it was a large thanks to the notes Kurama and I had taken when were in that mock-genjutsu world Obito had warped us to.

It relied heavily on pushing out Kurama's chakra—not unlike using his chakra as a cloak—but giving it a more solid and defined base. It wasn't much different than when Naruto passed along Kurama's chakra in canon and gave everyone cloaks.

From that point, it was a matter of solidifying that chakra into a sort of clone, and projecting Kurama's consciousness onto it. It had taken roughly six months after the war of Jiraiya, myself, Kurama, and the other bijū puzzling over the fūinjutsu notes we had taken from that other world and using them as a base.

However, at the end of those six months, each of the bijū was able to project him or herself from his or her host.

Although, they had to always be in a certain range of their host (the range would grow steadily over repetitive use, though), 'else they would find themselves back inside.

Furthermore, after years of working with Jiraiya and Kurama on the forest... we could safely say that we had created a haven for the bijū. The forest was entirely guarded by extensive fūinjutsu layers, and with the bijū's help, access to the forest became limited to a single entry point (The bijū had destroyed the surrounding land to create a moat with the ocean and left open a single narrow pathway they could traverse that was hella booby trapped against human chakra). Not only was every inch of the forest covered in seals that prevented anyone from sensing it, but it also had multilayered genjutsu seals (courtesy of the Toad Sages) to discourage people from evening seeing it.

I had even spent many years showing all the bijū how to create more of these seals through the use of burning their own chakra into the ground (a technique that was used prior to the discovery of chakra ink and was discouraged due to its... thoughtlessness).

I may not have (yet) found a way to keep the bijū from ever being sealed, but I damn well created a sanctuary for them (and mostly likely would create another one as soon as I found a big enough patch of land—Isobu was currently on the lookout for a large enough island).