The Hakimaster of Naruto

Chapter 258 258: The Reluctant Contract

The Five-Tails. Kokuō.

One of the nine legendary Tailed Beasts that had roamed this world since the age of the Sage of Six Paths. A creature of immense chakra and devastating power, shaped like a divine fusion of dolphin and horse, armored in chitinous plates that could deflect blades and jutsu alike. Its signature technique? A headbutt. A horns-first charge that could shatter mountains and reduce any caught in its path to a memory.

At this moment, the colossal beast and the lone shinobi stood frozen in the rain-soaked forest, one impossibly large, one seemingly insignificant. Their eyes met. The air between them grew thick with unspoken history.

Kokuō would never forget this human. Never.

He was the demon who had bounced a fully-charged Tailed Beast Bomb back into her mouth like a child swatting a rubber ball. The molten heat. The concussive shock. Even now, her stomach churned at the memory. Her throat still burned.

Since the death of her previous Jinchūriki, the restraints that had bound her to human will had snapped. She was free. A wild beast once more, released from domestication into the vast, indifferent wilderness.

At first, freedom was exhilarating. She wandered. She roamed. She visited places she had only glimpsed through the haze of her hosts' memories. But no matter where she went, the feeling of liberation soured into something hollow.

Emptiness.

She had lost her purpose. The days stretched long and meaningless, a directionless drift across a world that no longer seemed to have a place for her.

She was not like Shukaku the One-Tail, content to wallow in deserts, playing in the sand like an overgrown tanuki. She was not like Isobu the Three-Tails, who could spend a mortal lifetime submerged in a single lake, perfectly at peace. And she was certainly not like Gyūki the Eight-Tails, who only needed a decent rap beat and someone to listen to his rhymes.

She had sought out her siblings, the other Tailed Beasts. One by one, she had found them. And one by one, she had discovered the truth: they all had hosts now. They had all chosen to stay with humans. Bonds had been formed. Containers had been filled.

She alone remained unattended.

Free. And utterly alone.

So she had returned to the Land of Rain. She had tracked down the one human who had left an indelible mark upon her consciousness. The one who had not yet departed with the retreating armies.

He was still here.

But his first words upon seeing her made her blood boil so violently she nearly reverted to her full size out of sheer rage.

"Are you here for a fight?"

Kokuō's nostrils flared. Steam hissed from her snout. For a split second, she seriously considered charging a Bijūdama on principle alone—just to remind this arrogant creature exactly what he was dealing with.

Calm down. You did not come here for this.

"Human," she said, forcing her voice into something resembling calm. "I have been searching for you for a long time."

"You want to fight me?" Ragnar's eyes narrowed. "I'm busy."

Does this human's brain consist entirely of combat?!

Kokuō swallowed her pride with enormous effort.

She exhaled a long, heated breath that rustled the leaves of the forest canopy overhead. When she spoke again, her voice was stripped of the divine authority of a Tailed Beast. It was simply... tired.

"Human, I have nowhere left to go. Let us form a contract. Become my Jinchūriki."

"...What?"

Ragnar's face went slack with genuine bewilderment. He stared at the mountain-sized creature before him, half-expecting the forest to dissolve into another of Madara's illusions.

A Tailed Beast. A legendary creature of mass destruction. Voluntarily asking to be sealed inside a human.

"Did you hit your head?" Ragnar asked. "Or is this some kind of April Fool's joke?"

"Do you humans not crave the power of the Tailed Beasts?" Kokuō pressed, lowering her enormous head until one massive, lantern-like eye was level with Ragnar's face. Up close, the sheer scale was overwhelming. Her pupil alone was larger than his entire body. "I am offering you this opportunity. Form a contract. Become my Jinchūriki. You will gain power beyond reckoning. Is this not what you want?"

To be fair, any other shinobi in the world—Kage included—would have leaped at the offer without a second thought. A willing Tailed Beast was the ultimate power-up. No struggle. No suppression. No risk of rampage.

But Ragnar was not any other shinobi.

"No," he said flatly.

Kokuō blinked her massive eye. "Why?"

"I've never seen such a weak Tailed Beast," Ragnar said, his voice dripping with merciless mockery. "You couldn't even beat me. What possible use could I have for you?"

PFFFT—!

If Kokuō had been human, she would have coughed blood. The insult struck deep. She, a being born from the very chakra of the Sage of Six Paths, a creature who had witnessed the rise and fall of empires—called weak by a mortal who hadn't even seen three decades of life.

If she could beat him, she would have devoured him whole already. She wouldn't need to negotiate.

"Your victory last time," she growled, forcing her rage back down, "was an anomaly. Do not assume that the Tailed Beasts are weak. If I were to unleash my true power, this land would shatter. Mountains would crumble. The human world would drown in catastrophe. I choose not to do such things."

Ragnar tilted his head. "Since when do Tailed Beasts care about human collateral damage?"

In his memory—in the stories he had watched unfold seven hundred episodes deep—Tailed Beasts rampaged. It was what they did. The Nine-Tails had turned Konoha into a crater. Multiple times.

"Under normal circumstances," Kokuō explained, hot air puffing rhythmically from her nostrils, "Tailed Beasts do not actively attack humans. This world was created by the Sage of Six Paths. We, the nine, were born from his chakra. His will flows through us."

She paused, her voice dropping to something almost somber.

"The hatred associated with us... it does not originate from the Tailed Beasts. It comes from you. From humans."

The Sage had created the nine siblings with a vision of peace. Each beast inherited a fragment of his will—a spark that urged them to live quietly, to seek harmony, to exist without conflict. They had done so for centuries. They dwelled in remote corners of the world, asking nothing, troubling no one.

But humanity's greed was bottomless.

They coveted the Tailed Beasts' power. They saw not sacred life, but weapons of war. One Jinchūriki after another, decade after decade, shackling the beasts and forcing them into servitude. And with each new host, the beasts absorbed the hatred simmering in human hearts. Resentment. Rage. Fear. It accumulated like sediment in a riverbed, slowly poisoning the pure waters.

Over thousands of years, the gentle creatures of the Sage's dream were twisted into the ferocious monsters of legend. Feared. Reviled. Hunted.

It was, Ragnar realized, the single saddest origin story in this world.

"Then why me?" he asked.

"You left the deepest impression," Kokuō said simply. "And you are strong enough to contain my power. You are... suitable."

"Think carefully," Ragnar warned. "Once the contract is sealed, you become a Jinchūriki's prisoner. The freedom you have now—wandering as you please—will be gone."

Kokuō's answer came without hesitation. Her massive head nodded, a slow, ponderous motion. "I understand. But wandering aimlessly... alone... it is empty. Hollow. I am accustomed to being with someone. Even if that someone is a human."

She had made up her mind long before she found him.

Ragnar stared at her for a long moment. Then he sighed.

Do I have masochistic tendencies? Getting saddled with a Tailed Beast who can't even beat me?

Still... a free Tailed Beast was a free Tailed Beast. Her chakra reserves were vast, far beyond anything a human could produce. And becoming a Jinchūriki came with benefits beyond raw power. The contract would transfer certain Tailed Beast traits to him. Enhanced physical constitution. Superhuman regeneration. These were things Ragnar valued immensely. His Devil Fruits and Haki were all intimately tied to the strength of his body. A stronger vessel meant a stronger everything.

"Fine," he said. "But can you do something about your size? You're too damn big. If you're going to follow me around, you'll attract every Hidden Village in a hundred-mile radius."

POOF!

White smoke burst forth. The mountain-sized beast vanished. In its place was a creature roughly the size of a large dog—a miniature version of Kokuō, her dolphin-like body sleek and compact, her five tails swaying gently behind her.

Without thinking, Ragnar reached down and scooped her up.

"H-Hey! What are you doing?!" Kokuō squeaked, suddenly flustered. Her tails twitched nervously. No human had ever simply picked her up before. She was a divine beast, not a lapdog!

Ragnar turned her over in his hands, examining her from every angle. His fingers traced along her smooth, chitinous hide. The texture was similar to a dolphin's skin—sleek, almost frictionless, surprisingly pleasant to the touch. He prodded her belly. He lifted her tails one by one, counting them.

"Relax," he said, his expression thoughtful. "I'm just checking whether you're male or female."

"..."

Kokuō's entire body went rigid. If a Tailed Beast could blush, she would have turned crimson.

This human was absolutely insufferable.

End of Chapter

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