My parents were dead.
The warmth that had cradled me, the hands that had shielded me, the voices that had spoken to me with love—
Gone.
And in their place, there was only an old man.
He picked me up, holding me carefully, like I was something fragile.
I had never been fragile before.
Not as a tree, its roots deep in the earth.
Not as a fox, swift and cunning.
Not as a dinosaur, strong and unshaken.
But now—
Now, I was small. Weak. Helpless.
He carried me away from the battlefield. Away from the ruined land where my parents' blood stained the earth.
The village came into view. Tall walls. High towers. A place meant to protect.
It felt like a cage.
A Different Kind of Hospital
I was taken to a hospital.
I had been in one before.
As a dog, taken to the vet, whining as the humans poked and prodded me.
As a fox, wounded by hunters, lying on a cold metal table.
As a cheetah, my leg broken in a fight, feeling the sting of antiseptic.
But this was different.
This hospital was… quiet.
Too quiet.
The air smelled like medicine and something too clean to be natural.
I was placed in a crib. The blankets were soft. The room was warm.
But it felt empty.
No mother nearby to watch over me. No pack to curl up against. No herd, no den, no pride, no flock.
Just me.
I stared at the ceiling, eyes heavy, body exhausted.
Eventually—
I fell asleep.
—ToT—
Hunger
I woke up with an unbearable emptiness in my stomach.
It was a familiar sensation.
I had felt it before—
As a fish, struggling in a pond too cold for food to be plentiful.
As a fox, starving through a harsh winter, ribs pressing against my skin.
As a cheetah, running for days without a meal, body withering from exhaustion.
But this—
This hunger was different.
Because this time, I couldn't do anything about it.
I couldn't hunt.
I couldn't forage.
I couldn't move beyond the weak kicks of my tiny legs.
All I could do was cry.
And so, I did.
The door opened.
A woman in white walked in. A nurse.
She carried a tray filled with bottles, their milky contents promising relief.
There were others like me.
Other babies.
Some cried, some slept, some kicked their blankets.
And like a practiced routine, the nurse went to each one, pressing bottles to their tiny mouths, feeding them gently, whispering soft words.
I waited.
She was coming closer.
My tiny hands curled into fists, my stomach twisted.
Feed me. Please.
But—
She walked past me.
I blinked.
I watched as she moved to the next crib, feeding another baby, rocking them in her arms.
Then another.
Then another.
And still—
I was ignored.
Why?
I didn't understand.
Why?
Was I not hungry like the rest?
Was I different?
Had I done something wrong?
I opened my mouth, letting out a wail, demanding attention.
Nothing.
She never even glanced at me.
I cried louder.
She simply left the room.
And I was alone.
With nothing but the sound of my own hunger.
Days passed.
The room that was once filled with cries and quiet breathing became emptier.
One by one, the babies disappeared.
Strangers—men and women—came into the hospital.
Soft whispers. Careful hands. Some smiling, some crying.
I listened.
I watched.
They murmured words I barely understood.
"Orphan."
"Poor child."
"They'll have a better life now."
"They deserve a home."
And just like that—
One by one, the cribs emptied.
I waited.
Surely, someone would come for me too.
Surely, someone would pick me up, hold me close, whisper to me like they did to the others. I was once a sick stray kitten— children showered me with love— that was a cozy life. Surely, someone would come for me.
But—
They never did.
Eventually—
It was only me.
The once full room was now silent.
No more soft coos of nurses.
No more shifting blankets.
No more tiny cries of hunger.
Just me.
And yet—
I was still here.
Still unwanted.
Still not adopted.
The realization was slow, creeping in like the cold breeze that slipped through the window.
No one was coming for me.
I wasn't chosen.
I wasn't wanted.
I was… alone.
—ToT—
The door creaked open.
For a moment, I thought it was another stranger coming to take me away.
But it wasn't.
It was him.
The old man.
The one who had carried me from that battlefield, from my parents' arms.
He stepped into the empty room, his eyes scanning the rows of abandoned cribs until they landed on me.
A sigh left his lips. Not of annoyance, not of frustration—something softer.
"So they left you alone, huh?" he murmured.
Then, he picked me up.
His arms were warm.
I hadn't been held since that night.
His grip was steady, his hands careful as he cradled me close.
I stared up at him, blinking slowly.
Who was he?
And why—why was he the only one kind to me?
As he carried me out of the hospital, I heard his mutterings.
"Nurse grudges..."
"Child abuse in my village..."
"Unforgivable. Execution will be necessary."
I didn't understand all of it.
But I understood enough.
The nurses hated me.
They had left me to starve on purpose.
They had taken care of the other babies, but not me.
They had let me suffer. On purpose.
I had been abandoned before—left to fend for myself as a tree, a fox, a fish.
But this?
This was different.
Because this time, it wasn't nature's way.
It was cruelty.
I clung to the old man's robes, instinct telling me that he was the only safe thing in this world right now.
He took me somewhere else. A small house.
Not grand. Not cold like the hospital. Just... small.
Warm.
He sat me down and fed me.
Real food. Not from a bottle forced into my mouth, not scraps I had to scavenge for.
I ate.
And as I did, I listened.
People outside whispered, murmuring as they passed.
"Hokage-sama is taking care of him?"
"Why does Hokage-sama even bother?"
"The demon brat should've been left to rot."
Hokage-sama.
They called him that.
Hokage.
I looked up at the old man as he smiled down at me, patience in his eyes, kindness in his touch.
What was a Hokage?
Was it another word for kind old man?
Perhaps.
Yes.
Hokage must mean kind old man.
—ToT—
I was tended to a lot.
Or not at all.
It depended on the life.
As a lone creature, I had no choice but to fend for myself. As a tree, I simply existed, left to grow or wither by the whims of the world. As a fish, a fox, a mammoth, a cheetah—I had learned what it meant to survive alone.
But when I was part of a herd, things were different.
The olders looked after the young. The strong protected the weak. The pride watched over its cubs.
That was nature.
But humans?
Humans were... unpredictable.
Some raised their young with warmth, with care, with laughter. Others abandoned them. Others hurt them for no reason at all.
I had seen both.
And now, I was experiencing it firsthand.
I was left in a small apartment.
Not cold, not warm. Just… there.
A crib in the middle of a room. Blank walls. A single window with a curtain that never quite blocked out the light.
I wasn't alone, though.
Humans with wooden animal masks came and went, appearing and disappearing like ghosts.
ANBU, they called themselves.
They fed me.
They changed me.
They cleaned me.
They made sure I didn't die.
But beyond that?
There was nothing.
No laughter. No smiles. No warm embraces.
They did what was required, and then they left.
It wasn't cruelty.
But it wasn't love either.
It was duty.
They were looking after me because someone told them to, not because they wanted to.
And I understood that.
I had been fed before by creatures that didn't care if I lived or died. A mother bear that fed her cubs but wouldn't hesitate to leave the weakest behind. A lioness that nursed me but only because her instincts told her to, not because she loved me.
This was no different.
But still—
One stood out.
One always lingered longer than the others.
One always looked at me in a way I couldn't quite understand.
Inu.
The ANBU with the silver hair.
The one with one dark eye and one red one.
I didn't know what the red eye meant. I had never seen anything like it in any of my lives. It glowed faintly behind his mask, strange, unnatural.
But that wasn't what caught my attention the most.
It was his gaze.
Even though I couldn't see his full face, I could feel it.
A kind of sadness.
Not pity.
Not disgust.
Just… sorrow.
Why?
I didn't know.
But I knew what sorrow looked like.
I had seen it before.
In a dying elephant's eyes as it lay down for the last time, leaving its herd behind.
In a wolf who lost its mate, howling at the moon in mourning.
In a mother bird watching her fallen chick, unable to do anything.
It was the kind of sadness that settled deep in the bones. The kind that didn't fade.
And Inu?
He carried that sadness every time he looked at me.
I didn't know what to make of it.
But I knew one thing.
Among all the ANBU, among all the strangers who came and went, among all the masked ghosts that tended to me and then vanished—
He was the only one who saw me.
—ToT—
Sometimes, there was the dark presence inside me.
The fox.
The Kyuubi.
The creature sealed inside me by my father, Minato Namikaze.
I didn't know if it was a male or a female—it had no physical traits that told me either way. It was just... there. A massive, seething entity of malice and chakra, caged within the deepest parts of my mind.
And I had a mental space.
That was new.
I had never had something like that before.
Not as an animal, not as a tree, not even as a human in my past lives.
It was like a dream that wasn't a dream. A world within my own head, stretching endlessly in dark, murky passageways.
A sewer.
Cold. Damp. The sound of dripping water echoed through the emptiness, creating an eerie, rhythmic beat. The walls were wet, slick with something I didn't want to name. The air was thick, heavy, carrying the scent of something ancient and angry.
And at the center of it all—
A cage.
Massive.
Bigger than any structure I had ever seen, stretching so high that I couldn't see where it ended.
I had been in cages before.
I had been locked in a zoo, pacing behind metal bars as humans gawked at me.
I had been trapped in a circus, forced to perform tricks for amusement.
I had been shoved into a wooden crate in a pet shop, waiting to be sold.
But this?
This was unlike anything I had ever experienced.
This wasn't just confinement.
This was imprisonment.
A place designed not just to hold—but to keep something away from the world.
And behind those bars...
A creature.
Not just a fox.
A beast.
Nine tails curled behind its hulking body, flicking lazily, yet crackling with power. Red fur bristling with raw energy. Claws like daggers, teeth like spears. Eyes—slitted, glowing with rage.
Kyuubi.
That was its name. The ANBU, the old man, the villagers—they all spoke of it in whispers, in curses, in fear.
The monster that had killed my parents.
The demon that had nearly destroyed the village.
The thing that now lived inside me.
I was just a baby.
I couldn't speak.
I couldn't form words, couldn't ask the things I wanted to.
But I stared.
Every time I was pulled into that sewer, every time my consciousness slipped into that space, I sat before the massive cage and watched the beast within.
And it hated me.
It lunged.
It snarled.
It roared, slamming its claws against the bars, trying to rip through, trying to reach me.
Its malice was suffocating, filling every inch of my mind.
It wanted me dead.
But I didn't flinch.
I didn't cry.
I wasn't afraid.
I was merely... curious.
Because this creature. This thing.
It had killed my parents.
Why?
I wanted to ask.
I wanted to know.
Had it chosen to do so? Had it wanted to?
Or had it simply been like me?
A tool. A weapon. A being forced into something it had no control over.
Because I had seen it before.
The way humans used others.
They had used me, time and time again.
As a horse, forced to carry loads until I collapsed.
As a cheetah, hunted for sport.
As a mammoth, killed for my tusks.
As a bird, wiped from the sky by powers far greater than me.
Was this fox the same?
Was it just another creature trapped by human hands, forced into a battle it never chose?
I didn't know.
And for now—
It didn't matter.
Because no matter how much I watched it, no matter how many times I was pulled into this mental space, the Kyuubi never stopped trying to kill me.
And I just kept staring back.
Sometimes, random people would sneak into my apartment.
Sometimes it was a drunkard, stumbling in the dark, his breath reeking of alcohol and hatred.
Sometimes it was a shinobi, moving with silent precision, his blade already drawn before he even reached me.
Sometimes it was a civilian, their face twisted with grief, rage, and something even worse—desperation.
They all had different faces, different voices, different reasons.
But their goal was always the same.
They came to kill me.
I was barely more than a toddler, still learning to walk without stumbling, still figuring out how to use my hands for more than just grabbing.
And yet—
They came with knives.
With kunai.
With weapons meant to take my life.
And they always yelled.
Screamed about things I didn't understand but was starting to comprehend.
"You took my son from me!"
"Demon brat!"
"Because of you, my wife is gone! My daughter is gone! My clan is gone!"
It was the fox.
That's what they all said.
They didn't see me. Not really.
They saw it.
The Kyuubi. The monster that tore through their lives, that ripped apart families, that left them with nothing but a gaping, bleeding void.
And I—I housed it.
How?
I didn't know.
I was so small, barely the size of a housecat.
How could something as massive as the Kyuubi fit inside me?
It didn't make sense.
But then again, nothing in this world did.
The first time it happened, I didn't understand.
I was in my crib, drowsy, the room dimly lit by the moon shining through the window. I heard the door creak open.
Soft footsteps.
A shadow loomed over me.
A whisper.
"I'll end this now."
Then—
A flash of silver.
The cold glint of a kunai, raised high, poised to strike.
But before the blade could come down—
They arrived.
ANBU.
The masked watchers who had been in my life from the very start.
They moved so fast that I barely even registered what had happened.
One moment, the man was standing over me.
The next—
Blood splattered across the walls.
His body collapsed in a heap beside my crib, his empty, unseeing eyes still locked onto me.
Dead.
I stared.
Not crying. Not flinching. Not reacting at all.
Because... this was not new.
I had seen death before.
I had died before.
So I simply sat there, gazing at the man who had tried to end me, wondering why.
But ANBU didn't wonder.
They acted.
"Failure." One of them muttered.
Then they removed the body. Cleaned the blood. Left no trace.
Like it never happened.
But it did.
And it kept happening.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Sometimes it was a single attacker.
Sometimes it was two or three.
One time, an entire group stormed in, thinking numbers would make a difference.
It didn't.
The ANBU always came.
And they always killed.
And I...
I always watched.
I sat in my crib, or on the cold wooden floor, staring as my would-be killers fell before me.
Their eyes always locked onto me, wide and filled with something bitter and ugly as their lives bled out onto the floor.
And still—I never flinched.
I just... observed.
The way the blood pooled beneath them.
The way their bodies twitched before going still.
The way their final breath always shuddered out of them like a dying wind.
It wasn't fear that kept me still.
It was something else.
Understanding.
Because these people weren't killers.
Not truly.
They weren't like the shinobi who had hunted me as a cheetah, who had skinned me and taken my fur for their trophies.
They weren't like the man with red eyes and black hair who had tested his power on me when I was a dinosaur.
They weren't even like the shinobi who had killed me as a mammoth for my tusks, greed gleaming in their eyes.
No.
These people were something different.
They were... broken.
Grieving.
Lost.
Their hatred was not born from greed, or sport, or hunger.
It was born from pain.
They had lost something.
Someone.
And they saw me as the reason for that loss.
They thought that if they killed me, the wound in their heart would finally close. That the gaping emptiness inside them would finally be filled.
But it wouldn't.
I knew that.
I had been them before.
I had been the mother mammoth who watched her calf be speared to death.
I had been the dog who lost his owner and lashed out in blind rage.
I had been the seagull who saw an entire island burned to nothing, who screamed into the sky as my world collapsed.
I knew what grief was.
I knew what loss was.
And I knew—this would never end.
Not as long as I carried the fox inside me.
Not as long as people looked at me and saw it instead.
So I stared.
And the ANBU killed.
And the bodies were taken away.
And the cycle continued.