Chapter 44.1- One Thousand Hands

“Do I really need to be naked for this?” I asked her even as I resisted the urge to cover myself with my hands. I felt naked enough, no need to show just how self-conscious I was about the situation. Grandmother Mito laughed even as she passed a pot of ink to one of the other women. I was in a specially prepared sealing chamber, surrounded by nine of the best Uzumaki seal masters, and naked as the day I was born.

“Just be happy that Lady Mito vetoed letting us have our apprentices come in to watch” One of the men, Souta— or Uncle Souta as he insisted that I call him— joked off to the side.

“Stop teasing the boy” Ayame said in reply as she began to draw a seal on my chest. I’d thought that having the Kyubi transferred to me would be an easy thing. Just do some sealing and presto-chango, mission accomplished, but I’d never really considered all the work that went into creating a jinchuriki. In my defence, my sealing studies were focused on far more useful applications.

“Why should I? He’s the one who thinks he’s too good to be a proper clan head” Souta said again, even as he began drawing another seal on my shoulder.

“Like I said seventy times already, I had a mission and was sent out for the war. It wasn’t like I wanted to be away from you guys” I said, even as I was certain that I did want to be away from these people.

“Didn’t ask, don’t care” Souta replied. I resisted the urge to facepalm as Takeshi came to my side and began scrawling a seal down my arm. The purpose of all these sealing rituals as to prepare my body to host the Kyuubi by basically relaxing my chakra coils and a hundred other things- think of it like clearing the grass to make space for a house about to be built. Or like tiling a pool to prepare it to contain water.

Now I can already see you wondering- why didn’t Naruto need any of that in canon, and why didn’t Kushina need it here. Because the Shinigami did their sealing, and let’s just say that then shinigami is a much better fuinjutsu master than even the best Uzumaki. Clan myths said that the first Uzumaki learned to use sealing jutsu by following the Shinigami around. Of course, it was probably a myth, but considering we invented a jutsu for calling upon the shinigami, and even managed to seal him into a mask that called him forth when he wore it, there might have been a grain or two of truth in there.

“Leave the boy alone, Souta. He said he’s doing his best and now that we have him back we can do all the rituals and be done with it,” Himari said as she began to scrawl a seal on my left buttock. I tried not to reach from having the cold ink on such a sensitive area.

“What rituals?” I asked