Harry Potter: Juubi Extraordinaire
Chapter One: Plans for Escape

9/29/12

Wires crossed overhead in the dark chamber. Pipes of many sizes tangled throughout the labyrinth containing the chamber but curled away before entering the barred entrance. Only the glowing strands continued through the darkness. These wires bound some of his power, he acknowledged. He could not break them, could not weaken them, could not twist or even stretch them. But he could manipulate them to a degree. He could use them as a means of gaining information and he almost wondered if his host had any idea the true value of the chakra of a demon.

He snorted. Of course the boy did not. If the boy had any idea the demon knew where the other ends of the bonds were at any time, knew their health and could even see through their eyes and hear through their ears… Well, at the very least he would have caught the Uchiha much sooner. And his abilities did not end there. The bonds and the nature of his demonic chakra would give him a path to freedom from the seal that trapped him within the blonde human.

All that was required of him was his sanity so he could finally find the loophole in the seal. The seal was to bind a demon. It would give his host the ability to draw upon and survive some of his power. It also kept the mentally-corrupting nature of his chakra in check so it could not harm his host or allow him to do the boy ill. And yet, this seal was made by flawed humans and powered by Death.

He was the Master of Death. It had taken him years to understand what this meant, but he knew now. It was what kept even the deadly shinobi, those masterful assassins, from slaying him and the lesser demons made from him. Death could not take him so long as there was the slightest desire to live in him. Death could not truly bind him against his will. So the Shinigami did not prevent him from affecting those around his host, though parts of the seal implied that it should. The seal had been incomplete.

Harry knew that perhaps better than almost anyone. It had been his idea and he had been present for its making at every step. He had even tried to use it. The suicide fuuinjutsu that pulled the targets soul from its container and bound it to the caster and both would then be sent directly to the afterlife. It had been significantly changed since his time though. Now it was meant to bind him (or his lesser selves) into containers, the strongest versions demanding a willing human's life sacrifice and weaker seals demanding less. His, the first version, had been made by a society at its beginning explorations into dimensional pockets and other-space. His had needed more than one life sacrifice. Far more and it needn't be willing either. The brutal magik, darker than any seen since the sinking of Atlantis, required the deaths of one hundred sentient beings. They would be ripped from their bodies, have their identity and personalities stripped from them then the spell would tear into the soul itself to find the root of their magic and sever it. The loss of the body could not prevent them from feeling the agony of having something that had been an offshoot of their very souls cut away. Only the presence of the Shinigami, ready to gather up the lost souls, would prevent them from being utterly destroyed and allow them to survive to go on to the next plain.