Summary: Naruto is consummated under a blood moon. Minato and Kushina couldn't be happier. Then the Kyuubi attacks Konoha.
Author's Note: I do not own Naruto or Bloodborne.
Dusk stretched violet fingers across an orange sky. The sun setting over Konoha spilled the Mountain's shadow over it. Buildings, once golden under the sunlight, began to mirror the night sky above; a dark plain dotted with tiny, electric lights.
A large red building stood sheltered under 4 enormous heads carved into the mountain side. It overlooked the entire village. It had stood since the village began, holding silent vigil over it like some dark statue. The Kanji for "Fire" was painted on the roof. It was the Kage Palace; home to every Kage since the village had been founded.
An old man sat in its throne and smoked from a long wooden pipe. He watched as the sky turned from blue to orange to dark purple then to black with speckled light. His gaze was wooden, his face sagging further than usual from his skull. Memory had not been kind to him. He could not forget.
"It was on a night like this," he thought, "a beautiful night like this."
He took a puff. Memory drifted up through the dissipating smoke. He remembered.
The Kyuubi was a natural disaster given physical form. Its footfalls rumbled the ground like earthquakes, its howls thundered through the air like cracks of lightning, and nine crimson tails wind milled in the air like a furious tornado. Konoha's noble ninja stood no chance against it. It wrenched the ground from underneath their feet. It caught and swallowed men whole in its grinning maw. It batted them from the sky with its tails and crushed them under its paws. The ninja fought valiantly. They breathed dragons of fire, sent lances of stone and gouts of pressurized water at it. They flung lightning bolts and blade of air at it. All of them struck the viscous chakra clinging to the beast, a red miasma that hung onto every fiber of its fur. It was impervious to anything they could throw at it.
Sarutobi Hiruzen, already an old man, was pacing the waiting room of the maternity ward of Konoha's hospital with his successor, Namikaze Minato. It frustrated him to be pulled from battle in such a desperate time but Minato had ordered him to come. His black and grey armor had several cracks in it, some of the shoulders were missing, and dust and blood caked his face so heavily that he could have passed for a rodeo clown. Hiruzen stopped pacing and looked at his successor.
He was a young man with a full head of blonde spikes. He wore a white coat over the standard jounin uniform and black sandals. He was Minato Namikaze, the fourth hokage, and one of the most powerful ninja the world had ever seen. Hiruzen gave him a look that bordered on frustrated rage.
"Why am I here, Minato?" he ground out, teeth gnashed together as if he was restraining himself from throttling the boy.
The hokage, who had been staring into the distance for some time now, turned towards him. "I have a baby boy." He said it the way you would say what was on your grocery list, or how you might read the back of a book.
Hiruzen grit his teeth. People were dying, his people, and yet he was on the other side of the village. "No, Minato. Why am I here?!" he had raised his voice to match his fury. "People are dying outside and you ordered me to come, so would you please tell me what is going on?!"
The Fourth's eyes glazed into chips of ice. "You'll remember who you're talking to, Hiruzen."
Hiruzen froze. Minato had never used that tone with him before. It was usually reserved for insubordinate ninja. He hadn't been talked to like that since he was a genin.
Minato took one look at Hiruzen's gaping mouth and sighed. He hadn't meant to sound so harsh but the options available to him were making things difficult to stay calm. Minato took a deep breath and said: "I'm making my son the new jinchuuriki."
Sarutobi Hiruzen felt the wind leave his lungs in a long sudden breath that made his knees shake. It was unthinkable. It was impossible. The battle-hardened ex-kage had been in two wars, fought and defeated an uncountable number of foes and held his wife's hand during childbirth (the last of which was the most grueling), yet he had never had heard something so horrible. Jinchuuriki were treated worse than pariahs. They were the literal equivalent of gutter snipe in the eyes of the public. Minato was talking about damning his child to a life of social rejection and isolation.
"Minato, how could you even consider tha—"
"I don't have a choice!" Minato said, his voice cracking at the end. He looked out the window to the giant fox rampaging through his village.
The Kyuubi let out another deafening howl that rocked the village. Some building collapsed in on themselves. Hiruzen had never heard an entire village scream before. It nearly drowned the Fox's voice. Hiruzen swallowed, then spoke. "You can't create a seal fast enough to seal that thing permanently, Minato please liste—"
"The Shiki Fuin," Minato said, his voice going flat and breathless like wind blowing through a hollow reed.
The Third Hokage felt another invisible blow drive the wind from his lungs. He became convinced that his successor was trying to kill him via heart-attack. He had never heard of a more drastic, half-assed plan in his life. Using the Shiki Fuin to seal the Kyuubi into his new-born son, the thought made Hiruzen's stomach go cold.
Yet, the more he thought about it, the more sense it made. They needed an unformed chakra system to seal the Kyuubi. A fully formed one would just break under the strain .The Shiki Fuin was the fastest choice given the circumstances. But it would kill whoever used it. The dreadful realization choked the words from Hiruzen's throat.
"Minato, you can't! You'll leave your son fatherless!"
The young hokage suddenly aged a hundred years. The skin under his eyes had puckered into pockets of leather. Deep wells had formed in his cheeks. His face hung loose from his chin. The transformation horrified Hiruzen.
"An orphan, actually," Minato said. He raised both hands, palms cupped like a beggar. "I'm a widower."
Only now did Hiruzen notice the silence. A giant red fox was rampaging outside, crushing buildings under its massive paws, and yet all was still in the waiting room. There wasn't a single sound coming from inside the maternity ward. Not even the cries of a new-born child.
"The rest of the staff fled after they finished. Trying to get to their families, I think. I can't blame them," Minato looked outside at the destruction, "I don't have a family anymore."
"But you'll die, Minato. You can't orphan your only son," Hiruzen pleaded.
"He's not my son. I don't know what that thing is, but it is not my son," Minato said. He turned to the closed maternity ward doors and trudged towards them. "Come on, have a look for yourself." He shouldered the doors open and stepped through. Hiruzen followed.
The maternity ward was a room covered in white. Medical equipment were strewn on the floor. Surgical knives, a bone saw, surgical scissors, a basin to wash up in and a tray to hold it all, sat just a little away from the still bed in the middle of the room. The bed sheets were pulled all the way up over the occupant's head. There was a big red stain where the stomach should have been.
Minato was on the other side of the room, looking out the window. "They had to cut her open to get it out."
"Since they didn't have the usual equipment necessary, she lost a lot of blood, so much blood. I didn't know people had so much blood in them."
He turned to stare at his predecessor with ancient eyes. "She was dead by the time they'd pulled it out of her."
"Where is he?" Hiruzen asked.
"It," Minato said.
"What?"
"It. That thing is not human."
"Minato, Kushina wouldn't want you to talk about your son that way."
"That thing is not my son!" Rage glinted off Minato's dull eyes. "It killed my wife. There is no way that thing ever came from me."
Minato was grieving, he was sure of it. There was no way he could abandon his child. The man had been almost as excited as his wife when they heard she was pregnant. He hadn't been interested in any other subject besides being a father. He had quizzed Hiruzen for hours on the subject. He had annoyed his friends with inane questions about childrearing. He'd even asked his mentor, Jiraiya, a noted pervert. This wasn't the Minato who had read every book on parenting he could get his hands on, who had helped pick out baby clothes, who had practiced changing diapers in the Shinobi hospital. This was a man whose wife had died and whose village was currently being destroyed by a gigantic fox.
Another titanic step rumbled the very foundations of the hospital. The ceiling split into two plaster wedges and sprinkled them with dust. The lights flickered then continued to shine.
Hiruzen was thinking of a way to convince his successor then stopped. Something was off. The silence inside the maternity ward was disturbing. Dread began to pool in the bottom of his stomach.
"Where is he?"
Minato didn't answer. He was staring out the window again, surveying the destruction with detached awe, like a child looking at a dead body for the first time.
"Where is he, Minato?"
The blonde pointed towards the other end of the room. There was what looked like a crib hidden behind white curtains. Hiruzen walked towards them in slow, measured steps. He dreaded opening the curtains. What could make a man want to disown his son so quickly? What did Minato mean when he said the baby wasn't human?
He was halfway when he heard the soft breathing of the child, gentle sighs interspersed with small inhales. The sound reassured him. He walked more confidently to the cot. Hiruzen peeled the curtains back and peered down, expecting to see sleeping baby boy. He began to scream instead. The thing inside the cot woke and looked at him with three glowing eyes.
The third shuddered and sucked on his pipe. That image had kept him awake long after it had seared itself into his mind. He couldn't believe that it had turned into the young man he saw almost every day. His thoughts turned to the blonde boy. What was he doing?
Pale moonlight shone on blonde hair, making it glow in the dark. The boy was walking down the street on his way home. He wasn't supposed to be outside, but sometimes the night was too tempting to resist. He walked past a bar filled with rowdy patrons then sidestepped into the alley behind it. He was hungry. He hadn't had a thing to eat since yesterday. He crossed the alley and stepped out into the open street. His ears pricked up. Someone had screamed in the distance. He walked towards the sound.
Three streets down, he saw two shadows moving together. It was a man. He was holding something shiny in his right hand and had it pressed up to the second shadow's throat. It was a knife; one like the ninjas used, a kunai. The boy walked closer then pressed himself against the corner of the building. The second shadow was a woman with brown hair. She had both her hands up against the wall. Half her blouse had been torn open and the man was fondling one her covered breasts. She caught a glimpse of the blonde boy and began to beg with her eyes.
The boy got down on all fours and crawled around of the edge of the building and into the alley. The man didn't notice him. When he got close enough, the boy rose to his two feet. The man was now ripping the woman's blouse, further exposing her thin waist. The boy leapt onto the man's back and sank his razor sharp teeth into the side of his neck. The man yelped like a hurt animal then reeled backwards. The boy drew blood. The man dropped the knife and began to claw at the boy but to no avail, the boy had wrapped his arms around the man's neck and his legs around his waist. Blood trickled down the man's neck and stained the front of his shirt. The boy suddenly yanked back and tore a chunk of flesh from the man's neck. Blood gushed outward like a geyser, spraying the boy dark red. That broke the woman's paralysis. She screamed as the man lurched forward, hands reaching towards her. She ducked under his flailing arms and ran off into the night.
The man made another attempt to claw the boy but his arms had suddenly lost their strength. The boy spat the chunk from his mouth and set to the wound again. The man fell to his knees, his legs giving way under him. The boy unwrapped his legs and sucked at the man's neck. The man's struggling descended into pathetic shivering, then he fainted. The boy let the man fall to the ground and took a step back. He glanced towards the entrance of the alley. They were alone.
The situation reminded him of a childish rhyme he had heard in the orphanage. He said it in his head as it came to him: "Good food. Good meat. Good God, let's eat."
He picked up one of the dead man's arms and began to drag him towards the back of the alley.