Summary: When trapped in the belly of the Shinigami for all Eternity, even the most bitter of enemies can come to an understanding. In which Minato befriends his half of the Kyūbi.

Disclaimer: The Naruto franchise is owned by Masashi Kishimoto, Shueisha, Studio Pierrot, TV Tokyo, and Viz collectively. Please support the official release.

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In the Belly of Death God

Chapter 1

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Konoha's Yellow Flash was a legendary figure renowned for his battle prowess, admired for his charisma, and loved for his leadership.

But with enough of a push, even legends come crashing down.

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The birth was a difficult affair for Kushina. Compounded with the regular dangers of a childbirth, she was exhausted by the strain of keeping the Kyūbi imprisoned within its seal. The beast could feel its prison weakening after years of torment and it wanted out, so it fought like never before. But they'd anticipated this, the possibility of the Kyūbi's escape, so they'd taken Kushina to a secret location outside of the village for the birth. By this reasoning, if the Kyūbi escaped, at least Konoha might escape the full force of its wrath.

But Minato didn't want to even think about that possibility as he sat by his wife's bedside stiff as a board, listening to her groans of agony, doing his best to help her keep the Kyūbi contained within its prison. The thought of life without her terrified him, and every scream she made sent a stabbing fear through his heart.

Eventually after a drawn-out, gut-wrenching moment, Kushina sobbed with relief and a new voice let out a tiny wail as Minato was handed his son.

Minato marveled at the fact that he was a father. Him! But his wife's shuddering gasps quickly brought him out of his daze.

"Kushina!" He carefully gave his son to Biwako who was serving as a nurse before rushing to his wife's side. Her red hair spilled around her head in a messy pool, and her face was sickly pale and shimmering with sweat. Her eyes were slightly glazed and her breath was uneven. He grabbed her hand, feeling her clammy skin suck the heat out of him, and she turned her exhausted gaze his way. "M-Minato? Where's Naruto? Where's our son?"

And that was when Minato heard him.

"Yondaime Hokage, give up the Kyūbi or your son dies."

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"Minato," Kushina gasped. He could hear the strain of Naruto's birth in her voice, the strain of having the Kyūbi ripped from inside her. That she was still conscious was a miracle in of itself, but Kushina defied all odds by managing to restrain the Kyūbi with her golden chakra chains. But Minato knew those wouldn't last forever, and neither would Kushina. After all, the creature was so massive that even when pinned to the ground it towered above the forest canopy.

"Minato," she said again, "it's because he's our son," her voice faltered as she coughed, blood spilling out of her mouth. As she moved, the chains coming out of her back shifted and he could hear the sound of metal groaning in protest as the Kyūbi fought against them. The sight made Minato's eyes sting and his throat constrict and his heart ache in his chest. "It's because Naruto's our son that I don't want him to bear such a heavy burden!"

But with more than half the village leveled and most of his forces dead or severely wounded, Minato no longer had any other choice. He smiled at his wife and at the tiny, tiny child sleeping in her arms, completely ignoring the rumbling growls of the giant beast behind him.

"He has many trials he'll have to face, the least of which is the masked man that set the Kyūbi loose." Minato's eyes narrowed momentarily. Uchiha Madara. Such power, to be so strong at such an old age. His gaze softened when his son stirred in his sleep, and despite the situation the corners of his lips twitched up in a small smile. "But it's because he's our son that I know he can handle it. He will open up the future as a jinchūriki," Kushina flinched at the word, but Minato forged on, "I don't know how, but I'm sure!"

"But . . . Minato . . ."

Minato turned and walked a few yards away.

"Minato, please!"

He closed his eyes. This was the end of the line for him.

"Kushina," he murmured, drawing the very last of his strength in a final burst, shaping the chakra with a single handsign, "let's believe in him."

He felt a deep chill as his soul left his body. It was comparable to jumping headlong into the waters of a frozen lake, the way the cold robbed him of all warmth and made it hard to move. He was half certain that his breath should have been visible in cloud-like puffs, despite it only being fall. He didn't have to look behind him to know that the Shinigami now had his damned soul in its grasp.

There was no going back now.

"After all," he continued, "Naruto's our child."

Kushina's face crumpled as she hugged their son to her chest, but before she could say anything the ground shook as the Kyūbi snarled in its great voice, causing Minato to turn and face it. Hatred was a rare emotion for Minato, but in front of the beast that had doomed his wife to die, he had it in spades.

"Yondaime! I will destroy you before you have the chance to seal me again!"

As Minato watched, the monster that had laid waste to his village began savagely ripping itself free of the many chakra chains holding it down.

He breathed in, long and deep, and the cool autumn air filled his lungs and cleared his mind.

"To forsake my country and village would be the same as forsaking my child. You whose birth nation is in ruins know that all too well. Life is harsh for those without a land to call home. Kushina . . ." Minato turned to look at his wife and saw the tears streaming down her face as the hope fled from her eyes. He didn't let it affect him. Couldn't let it affect him. "Our family are ninja, and we have a duty to our homes. All of us."

Kushina choked back a sob and Minato shifted his gaze to his sleeping son, eyes tracing over the whisker-like lines that marked his chubby cheeks. Behind him, the Shinigami shifted in warning, the blade held between its teeth glowing a bit brighter. Its meaning was clear: one way or another it was leaving with a soul. Whether that soul was Minato and the Kyūbi or just Minato was entirely up to him. He was running out of time. "Goodbye, Kushina. I'll always—"

He was cut short as the Kyūbi, no doubt sensing its impending doom, ripped completely free of Kushina's chakra chains. Minato heard her gasp as she nearly fell flat on her back, and the Kyūbi's deafening roar blasted the air as it lunged forward.

He narrowed his eyes. "Too slow!"

Death plunged its arm through his body, and for the first time Minato understood what it meant to be mortal, to be at the mercy of the inexorable march of time. How fragile and inconsequential life really was. How brief. He watched as the Kyūbi's eyes widened dramatically, as a fresh batch of Kushina's chains ensnared it while it felt the ethereal arm of the death god clawed its way into its soul.

Frozen in death's grasp, the Kyūbi watched with wide, horrified eyes. "You . . . You actually—" It could probably see the Reaper now that it was at its mercy. But it was far too late for both it, and for Minato.

He barely had enough energy left to stand, but somehow found it within himself to complete his technique. "Seal!"

Just like that, the Shinigami's arm pulled, and a massive blob of the densest chakra Minato had ever felt in his life, denser by far than even Kushina's, plunged through him and straight into the Shinigami's waiting mouth. He staggered at its weight, at the power. The skin on his stomach burned as the residual energy shaped itself into the mark of the Reaper, and the chakra was forever sealed within the Shinigami's belly.

When he opened his eyes, he gave a weak chuckle as he saw a much smaller Kyūbi snarling and struggling against the chains that held it down. "Such strength," Minato gasped. "To think that even the Shinigami could not fully subdue you."

Suddenly, the fox's great red eyes filled with a terrible rage, and it roared, "YONDAIME! HOW DARE YOU!"

In the strength of a berserker rage, it tore the chains all off of its body and lunged, correctly guessing Minato's intentions. As Minato saw the sharpened ivory of the beast's claws aimed straight for his son, he acted entirely on instinct.

So too, it seemed, did his wife.

The Kyūbi's claw pierced them both with a wet splat, but they were enough to stop it short, mere inches away from the baby.

The monster screamed with fury as it was sealed inside a newborn, but Minato didn't care. Konoha was safe. Naruto was safe. And he'd died while holding Kushina in his arms.

With that, he closed his eyes as the Shinigami devoured his soul.

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"You."

Minato's eyes snapped open at the booming hate-filled voice and immediately narrowed at what was in front of him. It was the Kyūbi, but not the one Minato remembered. This one was the same size as the one he'd sealed into Naruto—but it's fur was a much darker shade of red. A massive length of chain was lodged in the fur of its chest, and Minato's eyes trailed the metal links until he found that the other end was lodged in his own chest.

"Me," Minato agreed, more than a little bitterness in his voice. If they were both going to be bound together in the Shinigami's belly for Eternity, he had no intention of cowering before the creature that killed his wife and tried to kill his child.

The beast's eyes narrowed to tiny, smoldering slits, looking for all the world like hellfire by the way they seemed to glow.

Then it lunged, great jaws snapping, and Minato leaped high into the air, twisting and hammering an instantly-formed rasengan down onto the creature's back.

It felt like weeks before they stopped. For whatever reason, they never tired in this state. Their injuries would only last for seconds before the pain and the damage evaporated, nothing more than a memory.

They did not pause to wonder or question, but only fought harder and more recklessly than before. They both had plenty of anger: Minato for his lost family and his wounded village, and the Kyūbi for his weakened state and his new prison.

But even so, it eventually became clear that neither of them had (or ever would have) the upper hand. The Kyūbi was no longer powerful enough to obliterate him on command, and while Minato was no longer handicapped in his need to protect his fellow villagers, he also no longer had his trump cards of Kushina's chakra chains or the Reaper Death Seal.

So they simply backed away, glaring at each other all the while. Then the Kyūbi snarled and looked away without a word, inspecting its surroundings for the first time, even as Minato seized the opportunity to do the same.

Now that he had the chance to look without trying to avoid slashing talons and snapping jaws, he saw that it was neither night nor day. There was light coming from the distant horizon, but only barely with no discernible source like the sun or moon. There were no stars shining in the darkness up above. The land around them was a flat and barren wasteland—not that he'd expected the Shinigami's belly to be in any way fertile. The ground was dry and cracked, and the few plants in sight were long dead and quickly crumbling to dust.

The area around them was scarred with battle. Rifts in the ground that marked where the Kyūbi had slashed at Minato, but he'd managed to slip away in the nick of time. Here and there the ground had turned slightly glassy after the Kyūbi's attempts to simply do away with its hated enemy with a single technique—it'd missed, of course, but Minato could certainly appreciate the power.

"Keh!" Minato looked up in surprise as the Kyūbi made the first noise since they're arrived that wasn't a roar or an insult. It turned its massive head one way then the other and its brows drew together, signifying displeasure in what it saw—or the lack thereof. "Is there nothing in this desolate wasteland?"

Minato hummed thoughtfully, before saying, "I would imagine not." Those burning eyes snapped to his form, but after weeks of nonstop fighting he'd long since lost anything even resembling fear for the Kyūbi. "We're in the Shinigami's stomach, after all. I'd be very surprised if we ever found anything alive."

The Kyūbi snarled as its tails writhed behind it, and it slammed a taloned hand to the ground, shaking it with the force of a small earthquake. Minato didn't so much as twitch. "You've doomed us both to a wretched existence, Yondaime! Now we will wander this desert for Eternity until we drive each other mad!"

Minato looked sidelong at the snarling beast, his eyes slightly shadowed by long yellow hair. "You forced my hand, Kyūbi. You laid waste to my village, tried to kill my son, and succeeded in killing me and my wife." He felt his teeth grind, but didn't bother to reign his rage in. "That you were being controlled by the masked man does not matter—you were simply too dangerous to be allowed to wander free."

He watched as it's eyes widened with something resembling surprise before they narrowed to venomous slits. "What is it with you Hokages?" it hissed, voice dripping with contempt. "You see that something is dangerous and decide to do away with it. But aren't you humans more dangerous to each other by far? Haven't you shinobi caused far more pain and sorrow than I ever could?"

Minato stared back, his face impassive as it leaned in close, steaming air puffing through its nostrils. "The night of our sealing I destroyed a few buildings and ended the lives of at most half a thousand mortals. But you?" Minato frowned ever so slightly, his gaze going just a bit harder, but the Kyūbi only gave a dark chuckle. "Kushina's seal wasn't absolute, you know. I heard things, sometimes saw things. Do you know how Kushina reacted when she discovered the man she loved had murdered more than a thousand Iwa shinobi in mere seconds? How she really reacted, and not whatever cheap act she put up in front of you to you to hide her feelings."

Minato's fists got so tight that if he hadn't had instant regeneration in this place, he would have drawn blood. He would not rise to its bait. But a small part of him deep inside was afraid to know what Kushina had truly felt.

"Tell me, Yondaime," it sneered. "Which of us is the real monster here? Me who's merely shaped like one and thus treated like one, or you who has single-handedly earned the title ten times over?"

Minato's graze grew steely. "If you wish to attack me, then do so. Petty insults will accomplish nothing."

"Petty?" the Kyūbi barked a cruel, mocking laugh. "I will never understand how a human who has inflicted so much pain upon others could ever be at peace with himself, but it seems you've managed the impossible."

It lifted its head away and turned to where light spilled over the horizon. "As much as I would love to destroy you, it seems that's just as impossible as you destroying me. I have no intention of fighting this meaningless battle with you, Yondaime."

Minato marveled at the fact that a creature of such hate was able to use reason at all, but he couldn't help but agree. There really was no point to all of this. Not anymore.

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Author's Note: I've had this idea stuck in my head for a few months now and it's about time I actually wrote it down. This story is pretty much how two creatures that have every reason to hate each other become friends. Minato and the Kyūbi obviously aren't friends yet, so this will take a while.