Winning Over Utakata
Someone who had been there?
Utakata froze. When Sōji pointed at his abdomen, realization finally dawned on him.
The Six-Tails!
"I... I..."
Utakata shook his head, fear plain on his face. He had lived with the Tailed Beast inside him for more than a decade, yet it still filled him with a dread he could not put into words.
Seeing this, Sōji reassured him. "Don't worry. I'm here. Sooner or later, you have to face it!"
Besides, of the Nine Tailed Beasts, the Six-Tails and Seven-Tails had the gentlest temperaments. Of course, in terms of fighting strength, the two were also second to last and dead last.
The Nine-Tails was the strongest. It also lived on plains that overlapped heavily with land suitable for human settlement, so humans often drove it away or exploited it. That had only deepened its hatred of them.
The One-Tail hated humans too. The creature was a walking natural disaster; wherever it appeared, sandstorms were sure to follow.
So the people of the Land of Wind often sealed it away. As it happened, that misfortune had made the One-Tail increasingly skilled in Sealing Techniques.
In a ranking of fighting strength, its wind and sand ninjutsu, combined with its Sealing Techniques, could keep it in contention for third or fourth place even though it could not use a Tailed Beast Ball.
As for the others, they either stayed deep in the mountains and forests or roamed the oceans at will. They had little contact with humans and did not hate them nearly as much.
That changed when Hashirama established the ninja-village system. To balance the powers, he captured the eight Tailed Beasts other than the One-Tail and distributed them among the major villages.
He had hoped that if everyone held a weapon of