Chapter 15: Priests and Preparations

Sachiko was the first development in my last four months in Uzushiogakure. To aid in her development and training, I ensured she received the most recent version of the DEWS laser weapon seal, an enhanced HUD-projector around her eyes, and the best defensive body-sealing scheme I could cadge out of Hikaru jii-san as well as a built-in Cyclone-Cannon Seal and a full selection of Magazine seals. Unfortunately, she did not have time to learn how to use a Pelican as well as all of her other training; it was something I intended her to work on by remote-training using a Pelican stationed out of Uzushiogakure after our arrival in Konoha, though if possible I'd have her using a Sea-Hawk or even Peregrine depending on what designs were published.

The second development was my social and diplomatic training. I was expected to have small classes, mostly as they fit into my schedule, from a special tutor assigned by Kazuo-sama to educate me on diplomatic conventions and polite behavior in every setting. I dined most days with either Kazuo-sama and his family, including Kushina, or with whatever guests he was entertaining on business. During that time, I became close with Kushina and learned more than I had every imagined knowing about the background of running a nation and the social niceties so important to avoid incidents in that semi-feudal world.

The third development, and by far the most draining to my time and energy was my Advanced Seals training. I suffered with semi-constant headaches during those four months due to over-use of my mental reinforcement, all to push myself to the level that I needed to obtain before leaving.

The group that took over my seals training was actually the Priest-faction. I was officially ordained as the lowest-possible rank, an apprentice exorcist to be exact, so that I might be inducted into some of their mysteries and prepared for my tasks.

The high-ranks of the Sealing Department saw a unique opportunity in me. To understand this opportunity, you need to know something of the deep mysteries of chakra. Should you ever end up in the Elemental Nations, DO NOT MENTION THESE. They will get you killed or abducted, and draw the interest of the likes of Madara or Itachi.

The deep secret that needs to be understood is the nature of “demons,” in particular the Biju, and how they relate to chakra and the local fabric of reality. I will relate what was related to me.

Before the first days of chakra, far before even the Sage of Six Paths, there was a great society with mighty powers. From what I personally understood, it was a modern, or post-modern but still recognizable civilization similar to those present on Earth. Then, something happened, though what exactly I didn’t know. Possibilities included high energy physics experiment, superweapon, divine intervention, extra-dimensional interference, alien act, or just an (un)natural disaster.

The result though was chakra.

When chakra first came into the world, it was wild, uncontrolled. For while the Nations had adapted to chakra over time, chakra was not originally native to this world. Instead, it came from realms of greater chakra-density, and poured into our world. Unbound Chakra, lacking even the structure of standard, dangerous nature chakra as used by Sages, was power and change. New, unstable bloodlines would form in those completely unused to chakra.

Imagine, a town's marketplace, crowded, full of life. A man begins to bleed from his skin and claw and writhe. His bones begin to break through, and as the crowd flees, too slow, a forest of bones erupt around the man, killing him and any within a few hundred meters.

For far too long, that was peoples’ reality. Humanity shrank, often surviving in small pockets where the local chakra was, for whatever reason, particularly weak or benign. And chakra did not make it easy for even these little remnants of civilization to survive. Technology stopped working, and beasts empowered but also driven mad by raw chakra hunted mankind in the ruins.

Some lucky human individuals survived their mutations too. A rare few benefited, gaining new powers, and even fewer managed to establish bloodlines that bred semi-true. By the time I was born, everyone had small bits and pieces of potential bloodlines in their systems, though far too few could activate them.

Eventually, the pressure of chakra equalized. The fabric of reality, no longer strained by this bleed-over of chakra, eventually healed. Even the chakra, as it was filtered by the living, gradually became less dangerous.

But chakra was not the only thing to have come over. Creatures of foreign realms came too, or, if they did not come, their attention was drawn. From this, we knew the existence of the many varieties of Spirits, Demons, the Celestials, the Gods and Powers and Concepts.

Incredibly dangerous, the very presence of these beings was enough to raise the local chakra levels. Some, like the many varieties of Demons, were too foreign or hostile to safely treat with. Others, the Celestials, were powerful but benign. The Gods, mightier still, might be constant or capricious as their nature. Places of strong chakra could develop Spirits, genius loci, or perhaps these Spirits grew the chakra of their location. There existed beings of Power, absolute dominion over some aspect of reality, and Concepts like Death that embody that aspect of reality itself.

These beings were both blessing and curse. Without them, I found it entirely possible that the era of chaotic chakra would have lasted much longer, and many a human settlement would have failed without the intervention of a well-meaning kami. It was entirely possible for all of mankind to become extinct, or so mutated as to no longer qualify as human. But still, that left many of these beings, or their emissaries and servants, sharing our planet.

The first sealers were exorcists, trying to protect what fragments of civilization remained, and priests who would doctor the soul, trying to remove the corruption of Unbound Chakra. One group, particularly skilled, was the origin of one of the many clans that would eventually be incorporated into the Uzumaki, and the source of our skills in sealing.

There were deeper mysteries still, secrets of these beings greater and more terrible than humanity could ever be, but such were above my needs and capacity. The Biju, though, the Biju's history was something I did learn.

At the site of one of these holes in reality, some say at the site of the first such hole, came to be a tree. It is unknown whether this tree was there, and managed to survive the Unbound Chakra, growing in ways it needed, or perhaps a Spirit or minor God joined with this tree, or the tree was itself a migrating god. What is known is that a mighty tree grew there, and in it was stored the chakra of a wide region. This tree served as a filter, and was part how the world's stability increased.

At one point though there came a wandering tribe of people who claimed “to have descended from the stars.” I suspected that they might have been the progeny of those once living in orbital habitats, descended to our planet, Chakyu. It was possible that they were explorers, or left after key systems failed, or perhaps were exiled as a result of some power-play. Regardless, they arrived.

Mistaken as Celestials due to their powers and wondrous items, they knew little of chakra, and settled at the roots of the Great Tree, which kept a wide area safe for human habitation. Not content with their lot and powers, they studied the tree, and sealing.

One day, in either the greatest mistake or greatest success of their experiments, they found a way to drain the chakra of the Tree, and use it to empower humans. Most died, or were mutated with local creatures; of these are numbered the lesser summons clans native to the Nations (as opposed to those greater clans native to near-by realms). Others were transformed and driven mad; they joined the ranks of those considered demons and were killed or sealed.

But of the experiments' success was born the first and only recorded human ascended god, the goddess Kaguya.

Kaguya would eventually give birth to twins, but she was not stable. Never meant to bear the power of a goddess, she gained a type of chakra illness associated with an overpowered chakra system. It drove her to desire greater and greater control of chakra. She began to think of all chakra as hers, and tried to take that of her children.

When they refused, she sought more power from the Shinju Tree. This time however she fell prey to the Tree's curse, and transformed. Far more mighty than any of those who had transformed before, her twisted form was likewise tyrannically strong.

After she took the form of the Jubi, the Ten-Tailed Beast, her children fought her. Having studied with the clan that would become the Uzumaki, and gained great skill, her children succeeded in sealing her. They split her chakra into nine beasts, the Biju.

For a thousand years, the Biju roamed the Nations, mostly keeping to themselves, though occasionally causing a disaster. Then, Madara captured the Kyubi, and Mito began her “great work of peace” by sealing the Beasts. In doing so, she reduced the levels of chakra in nature, and like a slowly breaking dam, the walls of reality were once more letting in more and more influence from Outside. There would be a balance, as was needed, but it could take a long time to arrive.

In the meantime, greater amounts of foreign chakra, unbound chakra, and benign, malignant or unknown but always inhuman influences would act on the Nations. Destabilization and conflict would result. This state of affairs was highly undesirable, and the priests intended to address the issue before it became a catastrophe.

I suspected, though did not say, that my own presence there and then was partially a result of this weakening of the walls of reality. I wasn’t sure I liked that implication, and what it meant for any of my future reincarnations and what apocalypses I might be forced to endure or avert. Then again, even back on Earth there were constant wars and conflict throughout human history.

The mission that the priests prepared me for was to conflict with the other Jinchuriki and Biju, and make it impossible for them to be sealed by anyone less than a true Sealing Master, or controlled by the accursed Sharingan, as well as how to help restore the balance.

To this purpose, I had to master four extremely advanced seals. The first seal was a sealing-protection seal. It would make it very difficult to seal whatever the protection seal is applied to. Functionally, it shorted out sealing attachments and twisted the chakra trying to attach to protection-sealed entity, similar to a white-noise generator drowning out lesser sounds. It was also sort of like computer password making a file read-only, in that if you knew how, you could still seal the protected being; the priests left that in so that the Biju couldn’t attack Uzushio.

The second seal was a Sharingan-proofing seal. It would, when fed chakra, disrupt genjutsu, and was optimized for Biju levels of chakra. It would also power a reflective coating around the eyes using naturally available chakra, and absorb the vast majority of chakra that shared the Sharingan's unique hybrid human-demon signal.

The third seal was a spirit-binding seal; it would seal the sealing-protection seal and the Sharingan-proofing seal to the Biju's spirit so that they could not be damaged by physical force. Functionally, it was the least impressive in effect. But it was by far and away the most impressive in difficulty and construction.

The fourth seal was a small but incredibly dense energy storage seal; I would feed it chakra from the Kyubi, then release it into the atmosphere. Since the Biju normally didn't exert themselves to their maximum levels of chakra gathering from the local environment, I could actually match the average chakra output of half the Biju taken together using just the Kyubi. This would lessen the degradation of the barriers greatly, especially since Jinchuriki still leaked some of their imprisoned being’s chakra.

The seal to bind the Kyubi to me would be permanent, binding us at the level of our spirits, but could be released with an act of will at the moment of my death; the release was buried deep inside. We needed a proper seal, rather than whatever Mito came up with, but equally the Konoha sealers would know, and claim they were cheated, if the seal were “temporary.” This seal, though, the Master of the Priestly faction would apply himself.

None of these seals were easy. In fact, they were hideously difficult. I had previously achieved fifth level Intuition, and was working on my sixth. A sealer was typically capable of learning seals at most two levels above their Intuition without excessive levels of effort and specialized education; even then, it would be risky.

Each seal I was meant to learn was based on level seven seals, with some elements from level eight seals. Each day I'd spend ten or more hours being tutored by the Master of the Priests' faction. It was a great honor. It was a mental and, as my reinforcement began taking its toll, a physical torture.

But I finally mastered the seals and their subtleties to the Masters' standards, barely four days before I was meant to depart. Our first stop was the Fire Daimyo's court to be presented, then we would continue on our way to Konohagakure along with the party that contained the sealers responsible for my future bond with Kurama, the Kyubi. In the process of mastering the seals I achieved sixth level Intuition, and became the youngest recorded Master Sealer of the Uzumaki Clan. Officially, however, for my protection, I was ranked an Expert.

I spent those last days with my family, other than some hurried gathering of my supplies and gifts. I had received a full set of sealed-armor from the Priests, whose Master was apparently something of a specialist in the art; the sealed-armor was a set of leather bands, blood-bound to me and summon-able, that was the closest I could come to full Body-Seals until I was at least fourteen years old. It would give a fair bit of passive protection from near-misses, and when active could tank even a regular Jonin for a hit or two; easily enough time to surprise them.

Hikaru jii-san gave me several sets of prepared wards; they were enough to thoroughly guard my future home, as well as a smaller set for traveling. He also helped set up a secure linked communications network between me, him, my parents and the Sealing Department. The Naval Weapons Group gave me a two way inanimate-transportation seal to transfer designs and prototypes, as well as ammunition reloads for my Pelican to and from my location.

Kaa-san gave me new clothes, and Tou-san two sets of kunai and shuriken with short-range recall seals, one being for Sachiko. Both gave me their advice and their love. Kushina gave me a picture of herself, and the order as “the future first female Daimyo of Whirlpool” not to forget home, and to call often.

Finally, laden down with knowledge and supplies and enough seals to fight a small war, carrying my swords and wearing my travel-garb, I was prepared. I made my goodbyes to my family and Kushina, and after some words from Kazuo-sama our forty-strong party left for the Fire Daimyo's court.

I'm not too proud to admit that as I stood on the deck of our ship at sunset, and looked back at Uzushiogakure in the distance, the image of my home was blurred by the tears in my eyes.