Prologue
In a secluded location, miles away from the Village Hidden in the Leaves, pained screams fill the air.
"Spirits, it hurts!" A flushed, redheaded woman screams, her hands almost crushing their support as she grunts in effort. "Why I ever let you do this to me I will never know!"
Beside her, trying to calm her down and seeking a way to ease her pain (partly out of the depth of love he felt for her, mostly so she wouldn't crush his hands), a blond man does his absolute best to get her to focus on him and not the pain.
Down below, between her legs, an elderly, gray haired woman does her best to help her fellow female get past the pain she is experiencing. The elderly woman can't help the tiny smile dancing on the edge of her mouth though; having been through such agonizing pain herself, she knows exactly how much joy the redhead will experience in the coming days.
Another contraction; another scream followed by a tirade of curses, all directed at the blond man whose hands the redhead is on the verge of crushing. "I should never have agreed to this!"
At any other time, the blond would have disagreed. As it was, he simply squeezes his eyes shut and prayed for things to come to an end.
Finally, heralded by a cacophony of cries, the storm passes.
"Congratulations, Kushina." The elderly woman smiles as her assistants swiftly wash the babies and swaddle them in clothes. "Welcome to motherhood."
The assistants pass the babies on; the child in the light blue blanket, a cherub faced boy with blond hair and a trio of whiskers on each cheek goes to the blond man while the redheaded child in the pink blanket goes to the woman, Kushina.
"They are so beautiful." She coos softly at the child in her arms before switching with her husband. "Look, Minato, we made beautiful babies."
"Yes we did, Kushina." The blond man, Minato, has a gentle, peaceful smile on his face. "Yes we did."
"I can't wait till we have more…" Kushina smiles tiredly as the elderly woman takes the children out of their parents' hands, not noticing her husbands pained grimace.
The peaceful atmosphere is shattered by a cruel laugh, accompanied by a trio of thumps.
"What beautiful children, Fourth Hokage."
Minato's heart races as he watches blood pool about the masked man's face, his mind a furious storm of details, plans, tactics. "They are."
"They look just like their parents." The masked man continues almost conversationally. "Surely their parents would do anything to save them, hmm?"
Kushina is only barely awake, her mind drifting in exhaustion so she can only catch snippets of the conversation.
In a flurry of motion, the masked man tosses the children into the air seconds before the Fourth Hokage moves, appearing on an adjacent wall with the children held in the crook of each arm.
"Nice reflexes."
The dry, mocking tone sets off mental alarms just as his ears pick up a horrifying sound.
The hissing of explosive notes.
The babies' blankets are riddled with the explosives.
'How-?' There is no time to think of the hows, only time for action.
The Fourth Hokage vanishes in a brilliant yellow burst, leaving the blankets to drift gently to the ground.
The blood of the slain elder has just begun to seep into the material when the notes flare.
An explosion rips through the night.
The first of many.
It takes a moment for the Hokage to gather his wits about himself, feeling the sting of rocks grating into his skin.
The kids are safe in his arms.
He glances toward the isolated cabin prepared for his wife, watches as the flames devour it.
He vanishes again; reappears in his modest home and swiftly places the children in their respective cots.
He takes a moment to search for his wife; he finds her tag and he vanishes again only to reappear moments later, his wife in his arms.
She's crying.
The worst has happened.
The Kyubi, that Nine Tailed horror, has been unleashed upon the Village.
He kisses his wife as he sets her into the bed in the nursery.
"Watch over them." He says as he dons his cloak and gears himself up.
He vanishes.
Kushina cries, knowing the threat that faces her husband.
She looks into her children's cots.
Determination sweeps through her like a flame.
Carnage.
The Village Hidden in the Leaves is aglow, not with sunlight nor by the calming light of the moon.
No, the Village is lit by fire.
Destruction sweeps through the land in the form of nine burnt orange tails; homes are ravaged by sonic howls unleashed from the maw of a titanic beast.
The shinobi are at their wits end. They have battled this creature for the past ten minutes, their effort all coming to naught.
Their home was on the verge of total annihilation after only ten minutes.
This was the power of the Strongest Tailed Beast.
This was the sight that Minato met as he teleported to the top of the Hokage Monument.
He was scuffed up, bruised; not only from his narrow escape earlier but from his recent scuffle with the masked man.
He had gotten the man to retreat, now it was time to take out his 'pet'.
He waited until the beast was preoccupied with a quartet of Akimichi Bullet Tanks before flinging a wind enhanced kunai high over the creature's head.
The instant it reached the peak of its flight, he teleported to its location, unfurling a blank scroll as he appeared. "Summoning: Food Cart Destroyer!"
In a mighty explosion of smoke, the Toad boss, Gamabunta appeared… right before it crashed on the Kyubi's head.
"Minato! What the heck-?"
"Sorry Bunta! This will only take a moment!"
They disappeared in a blinding flash of golden light, tailed beast, summon and human.
In a clearing not too far away, the three re-appeared.
Minato wasted no time jumping off Bunta as the Toad Boss struggled to keep the tailed beast pinned.
On a rock not too far away were the still, sleeping forms of his children.
His resolve nearly broke as he gazed upon their peaceful forms.
He knew that he couldn't defeat the Fox; no human could. It had to be sealed away, as it had been for the past few decades.
He couldn't seal it into any random shinobi; the surge of chakra would destroy their already set chakra coils.
A higher ranked shinobi might survive the initial process but anyone lower than Kage-level would die due to the foreign chakra overwhelming their own chakra.
None of the Sannin were available.
Sarutobi-sama would die due to his old heart simply failing to cope with the new strain.
He couldn't do it because of the technique he was about to use.
Kushina… a resealing procedure would kill her.
One viable solution.
The worst viable solution.
"Minato!" The Toad Boss was struggling to keep the tailed beast down.
Time was up.
He blitzed through the handseals and performed the summoning, watching as the Death God appeared in all its terrible glory.
He was the Hokage and he was ready to sacrifice himself for the Village.
The Death God began the procedure; one hand sped into Minato's stomach, erupted out the other side and went on to grab hold of the Fox. At the same time, its other hand extended, becoming eerie, proboscis like appendages that shot into both children's bellies, causing them to squirm.
The Fox, realizing what was about to happen, increased its thrashing, battling furiously to escape or at least kill the children it was to be sealed into.
A stray tail stabbed through the Toad Boss' belly, forcefully returning the summon to its plane. Almost immediately, a pair of tails lanced toward the children…
Only to be stopped dead by a flurry of golden chain that seized the tailed beast's every move.
The sealing was almost complete.
Minato looked at his wife and smiled. "I'll always love you."
He vanished, as did the Death God.
The sealing was complete.
Kushina broke down then, exhaustion, emotional, mental and physical all crashing into her.
Suddenly, a beam of crimson light shot up, drawing her attention to her children…
The redheaded girl was alright.
The blond was not.
The beam shot upward from his belly as a crimson aura engulfed him.
When it finally receeded, Kushina gasped in horror.
Her blond, blue eyed son was replaced by a redheaded, crimson eyed child, the whites of his eyes now pitch black.
Most damning, though, were the pair of fox-like ears that poked out of his hair.
In her broken state, she grabs a kunai and goes to stab the child, only to be stopped by a bone grinding grip on her wrist.
"Kushina you have a second to explain."
It was Sarutobi Hiruzen, the Third Hokage. He had sped toward this location the moment Minato's clone had informed him of the original's plan, outstripping ANBU detail.
Never in his life would he have expected to see Kushina this way; bloodshot eyes, shaking limbs, teary eyed…
She was experiencing a mental breakdown.
"That's not my son!" She screeched as she tried to twist her way past him, her broken mind unable to formulate a plan, unable to even think of using her chakra chains. "That's not our son! That's Kyubi! Kyubi!"
She dissolved into a mess of tears, and, the moment Hiruzen let go of her, she shot over to the redhead and cradled her protectively. "My daughter and I will have nothing to do with it! Nothing!"
The Old Monkey could only watch with a pained expression as the woman hobbled away, leaving her son behind.
The family was broken.
That's the end of the chapter. Please review and tell me anything and everything you want to. greenhorn000123 has left the server