A Few Needed Adjustments

worry

God, he was right. Something was wrong with that girl.

Kyubi couldn't sleep after what happened a mere six hours ago. Clad in only a plaid pair of boxers, he paced around his living, mulling over the previous events.

Natsume was a nice girl, a great girl in fact. Not many people could handle being a, let's be honest, unlicensed therapist for ghosts with Mommy issues. Others, like her father, would break down and be a bit more selfish, unable to handle the emotional stress. Yet Natsume was able to do it better than Keita. She was much less selfish and didn't break under pressure.

Be he knew she was a ticking time bomb. He didn't know where the little on the clock was, but it was definitely counting to zero.

All this time, his daughter had been sucking everything up, not letting it go. At least in a healthy way. He didn't know enough about her personal life to make an assumption. Who knows, maybe she did let emotions out in some way.

Kyubi cursed when a pain shot up his calf. In his pacing, he stubbed his toe on a wooden leg of the couch. Before, he probably would have kicked the couch or burned up half of it. But he didn't.

Sighing, the kitsune slumped down onto the floor in a sitting position. He didn't want Natsume to go Shadowside. His biggest concern was that one day, after piling up of emotions, she'd finally snap and...change. He shuddered at the thought, remembering his first time.

Fumika breaking off their relationship wasn't the sole reason for his metamorphosis. Two huge reasons played a role too. Hers was merely the straw that broke the camel's back.

The first was the death of his uncle Benjiro.

Kyubi, when not being under his father's hydraulic press of a thumb, spent a good chunk of time with his uncle, listening to his lessons that he often sporadically went into. He wasn't a bad person, but he was definitely the black sheep of the family. No one else in his family had forsaken the tradition of being protectors of towns and other areas to be a, God forbid, loner in the sticks.

He didn't wanna say his uncle was weird, more like... eccentric. Yeah, that was more respectful. He had a shit ton of off the wall theories and unverified "facts"of life.

One of which was that the idea of love and friendship being two separate concepts was a lie. Love was just and advanced version of friendship. Yeeeeaaaaahhhh, he didn't subscribe to that idea and a good chunk of others. Or maybe he just wasn't enlightened. Many other people with insane ideas became prophets.

But if he was, he never had enough time to spread the word. Kitsune are beings made to survive extreme heat. Unfortunately, this also gives them the weakness to the cold. Even a mild case of hypothermia could be deadly. It took him just one slip into the creek on a cold February and he was gone.

Needless to say, Kyubi felt like someone ripped a good chunk of his heart out. It didn't make it better that the only people at Benjiro's funeral were him and a former "student" (aka, a tanuki who hung with him).

He felt hurt that not even his uncle's blood brother would come to pay his final respects.

The second event was moving away from his father and putting on so many restrictions that he wouldn't be able to go even a mile without getting put into jail for 40-50 years. You think moving out of your father's home and onto greener pastures would be easy. Parents say goodbye, have a good cry, eff off, the end. Of course he couldn't have that.

Benjiro's death played a part in wanting to leave, but it was also the years upon years of emotional abuse.

He wasn't always that way. That's what others told him. He had never seen this "nice" side. Plus, how could he trust the people who did nothing when seeing a boy being verbally thrashed to tears all because he didn't know how to tie a neck tie correctly.

24 years. 24 years of shit like that day after day. He was sick of the pain, the embarrassment, the shame. Seeing one of the few lights in his life snuffed out, he just snapped. Kyubi ranted towards his father, letting years of suffering explode violently. He didn't take anything when he ran off; just his suit and his phone and wallet. He had a set of house keys, but those were discarded by being thrown against a wall.

He always pondered if he left a a dent there or not. He hoped it had.

He just ran. Ran far away until he came to a train station. By then, he had used what cash he had left to take him as far away as possible.

Even when over a hundred miles way, HE still called. When blocked, he sent letters, telegrams, emails, any type of communication you could imagine. When that was blocked, his father even tried to have someone come over and convince him to forgive his father because he was sorry and they'd make up, blah blah blah. Needless to say, it did not end politely. It was over that five month that he began seeing Fumika. She was a little light in his life, something to look forward to in his bleak future. If it wasn't for her, he might have, no, WOULD HAVE, turned to self harm.

When she dropped the truth bomb, it stung like a nest of bees that you riled up. But when she cut off the hook ups, it felt more like the bees were plunking harpoons into his heart. That was when he turned.

The memories were pretty much nonexistant. But Kyubi did remember the feeling. A churning cauldron of hate, mourning and disgust. The after effects, though, were very evident. Not only did his house look like it had two blind cows play land Marco Polo, when he saw the news, it reported that an under water volcano had erupted the night before so violently, it's magma made a new, albiet small island. That consolidated his sadness a bit.

He still was a bit begrudging that he didn't name it though. Kyubi Island would've been nice.

Leaning his head back to look at the stark white ceiling, he thought about it. He, at his lowest point, had been able to set off a volcano so much that it had made land. Kyubi had trained many years to get at that skill level, at the time. He could control it and it still sent off a ginormous surge of power. He was lucky it wasn't on land where there were people.

But Natsume...he no idea how much her untapped power was. It could be enough to start a campfire or enough to add a new island the size of Australia. He didn't know. And that was the scariest part. She didn't have any training to hold back automatically. If she went Shadowside, it could cause major, major damage.

A/N: oof, another long one. Now with extra AnGsT! Please comment your thoughts.