Blonding - A Time Travel Fic
Chapter 7
"Boruto? Are you paying attention?"
He couldn't see straight. He couldn't think straight. He felt a strange calmness wash over him; as if he was content to just be, wherever it was exactly he was currently. Thousands of colors danced in front of his eyes, flickering from one to another in rapid succession, traipsing across the boundary between real and illusion.
It was beautiful. Boruto never wanted to leave.
"H-huh? Shino-sensei?"
A nagging hum began to poke away at the back of his mind, driving him out of his nirvana. He desperately sought out the warm embrace of the strange-colored land again, flailing his arms about in the quickly darkening abyss.
"You heard me, Mr. Uzumaki. Please, give the class a detailed description of the Fourth Hokage."
Strange voices began to ricochet between his eardrums, exacerbating his headache to an almost mind-shattering degree. Light became pain, and pain became a memory as time seemed to pick up speed once again, his downward spiral quickening with every throbbing heartbeat.
"Uhh…"
The voices were beginning to grow in intensity and vigor, rattling around his fragile mind as the blackness began to grow blacker, the euphoria from earlier completely sapped away by the deepening darkness.
"It was in the required reading, Mr. Uzumaki."
More sounds became clearer as the black enveloped him like a cold blanket, its embrace unwelcoming. What was previously voices became the sound of a howling tornado, followed by a raging river, followed by…
"I know! I read it! I'm just… tryin' to remember, y'know. Uhh, the Fourth Hokage was Minato Namikaze, the youngest Hokage that the Leaf has ever had."
Silence. Everlasting silence. Boruto let out a sigh he didn't know he was holding in, but no sound or air came out of his mouth, much to his surprise. It was like the world was a vacuum; completely and utterly devoid.
"He was known for being a hero in the Third Great Shinobi War for destroying an entire battalion of Hidden Stone shinobi."
Suddenly, a small speck of bright white light appeared on the horizon, miles and miles away from where Boruto was currently falling. Still, without much of a second thought, he reached for it desperately, as if it was the essence of humanity itself. It called to him – beckoned him.
"Uhh... he died in the attack of the Nine-Tailed Fox almost 40 years ago."
The light began to grow in size and intensity, now the size of a small dinner plate.
"His signature technique was the Rasengan... right?"
A howling sound, like a hurricane, began to gnaw away at Boruto's thoughts as the orb of white light began to grow closer…
"Actually, Boruto, the Fourth was better known for his Hiraishin. You are correct in that he invented the Rasengan, but it was your father that properly brought it to fruition."
Closer…
"Wait… Hiraishin? What's Hiraishin?"
Boruto surged into the light, his entire body seemingly catching fire as it began to feel again, then hear again, then feel again; and, slowly, see again.
His eyes began to fuzzily readjust to consciousness, the outlines of objects growing sharper and sharper with each throb of his head. Trees began to reform as trees, the bright and unblemished blue sky became more rigid and recognizable, the orange blob next to him began to grow more and more humanoid with each passing second…
Boruto jumped awake, shaking whatever confusion or doubt he'd had from his mind as he did so. He gagged and coughed on the water in his lungs for a moment, hacking up the liquid as quickly as he could, and drew in a series of frantic, desperate breaths.
His father was lying next to him on the charred ground, seemingly unhurt and muttering profanities under his breath. The bubble he had been submerged in was nowhere to be seen, although both he – and his father – were completely drenched, leading him to believe that it had burst long after being struck by the oily cascade.
"…D-dad?"
For some reason, the phrase 'Good thing oil and water don't mix' kept rattling around his throbbing head, as Boruto leaned up into a sitting position with a groan. He looked back down at his father with a worried frown, giving him a more thorough observation now that he could see properly again.
Naruto was surprisingly unscathed, which confused the blond boy thoroughly. The last thing he had remembered before being struck by the force of Jiraiya's attack was his father smiling sadly down at him from outside the water bubble, as if he was planning on sacrificing himself to save the day. But instead of being a charred lump of flesh on the ground, his father was pretty much fine.
The same could not be said about his clothes, however; Naruto's once-orange dress shirt was now mostly in tatters, hanging off of him like a bunch of rags more so than the dignified garment is was intended to be. The majority of it was now a charred black husk – at least, the majority of whatever was left. The entire right half of his body was open to the elements, exposing his equally battered white undershirt and plenty of skin.
But that wasn't what was the most shocking to Boruto. As his eyes travelled from what used to be the neckline of his father's jacket down his arm, he almost jumped out of his skin in suprise. Halfway down his father's bicep was a visible line - separating warm, tan skin from ghostly, cold white. Several strange tattoos ran down the sides of the arm, lacing together like one of the many sealing patterns he had studied in school. The charred remains of what little bandage was left after the incident at the Valley of the End clung to the flesh like glue, most likely burned into the surface indelibly. The rest of the strange hand didn't seem to fare much better, charred and burnt nearly everywhere across the surface. It was a sickening sight, really; one that nearly made Boruto gag. Or maybe that was just the smell.
As if aware that his son was staring at him as if he were a summer snowstorm, Naruto shook his head and jumped to his feet, cringing a little as all the blood rushed out of his head. With a frown, he looked down at his completely destroyed outfit and growled.
"Damn it, that was my favorite shirt," he mumbled to himself, cracking his neck as he did so. When he felt the tingling sensation of being watch tickle at the back of his mind, he immediately swiveled to the left to meet the gaze of his shell-shocked son.
Immediately, Naruto began to rapidly fire questions at the boy, looking him over from head to toe. "Are you okay? Anything hurt? Broken? Err, well, more broken than before?"
The boy looked like he was trying to say something, but every time he opened his mouth, nothing came out. Instead, he just pointed a flabbergasted finger at the decrepit limb laying at Naruto's side, eyes wide in confusion and anxiety. "D-Dad… your arm…"
Naruto blinked once and glanced down at the singed appendage, sighing deeply when he noted the extent of the damage. "Shit… Tsunade's gonna kill me when she finds out I blew through another one. This damn thing's pretty much useless now."
Without a second thought, he stretched his left hand to the strange fault line on his upper right arm, and gave it a strong chakra-infused tug.
Boruto watched in horror as his father ripped his own right arm clean off, the pale white skin separating from the rest like putty peeled from glass. Naruto nonchalantly took the hand in his left and began to move on from it almost immediately, as if this was totally normal to him.
Just what kind of man was he?
"Dad?!" Boruto blurted out in disgusted surprise, taking a slight step back from what he could only assume was the biggest masochist on the planet. "Y-your arm!"
Naruto gave a confused frown, and looked back and forth from the white limb in his hand and the stump where it used to be. "What? Is there an infection or something? I try to clean under the prosthetic every few nights before bed to make sure that doesn't happen, but I've been pulling a lot of all-nighters at the office the past week or so…"
He waggled the stub in Boruto's direction worriedly, as if hoping the boy would give it a quick inspection. Instead, the boy nearly gagged and turned away, when he realized what his father was currently holding like a bag of groceries was actually never his father's real hand to begin with.
Surprisingly, though, there was no blood. He began to parse through his father's previous statement, eyes widening when he realized what Naruto had said.
"A prosthetic?" he muttered, suddenly looking at the eggshell-white appendage under a new light. No wonder his father kept it hidden beneath bandages all the time.
"Uhh… yeah? You didn't know that?" Naruto said in surprise. "I've been an amputee since before you were born. Here…" He motioned to the boy that he was gonna toss the arm his way. "…hold this, will you? I don't know where that bastard that did this is, but I bet he's gonna make his grand reappearance any second now. I need my hand free." He blinked when he saw the disgusted expression on his son's face as he moved to toss it midair. "Relax, it's just a prosthetic. I swear. Nothing gross about it. I have some things sealed in storage seals on that thing that I need, so can you just hold it for me, okay?"
Boruto grimaced, but finally nodded, catching the limb gingerly as it flew towards him. It was surprisingly light, and still a little warm to the touch, but definitely still unnerving to look at – especially up close. The boy opted to instead focus his attention on his father, who was looking around the charred battleground for any sign of Jiraiya or the man's new toad friends.
"Wait," he blurted out suddenly, a question popping into his head as he replayed recent events back in his mind. "Why aren't you… well, y'know… dead? I mean, you took that entire lava river thing right in the back just to save me…" his voice cracked a little, much to his everlasting chagrin, "…and thanks, but…"
"But why am I not burnt to a crisp like that arm?" Naruto smirked, pointing at the prosthetic in Boruto's hands with a shrug. "Honestly? I dunno. I think the strength of the impact forced me into the bubble with you – although the jutsu requires that at least one hand remains in contact with the outer surface of the water prison at all times. So I guess that explains why the prosthetic's shot." He smiled almost reminiscently, reflecting on past experiences. "It was a gamble, and I took it. I seem to have the strangest luck when it comes to things like that."
He winked. "Had a good feeling, though. Those are always good signs."
Boruto just blinked in surprise, still reeling. His father took that time to frown dangerously at the horizon, cracking his neck again as he did so. "Alright, asshole, come out and play," he muttered to himself. "You hurt me? Fine. But when you go after my son?"
He clenched his left fist into a harsh ball at his side, his eyes narrowing into slits. "You won't be leaving here intact."
"Funny, but it seems like you're one to talk," came a sharp chuckle from seemingly everywhere at once, as the toad sage once more appeared in a swirl of leaves a few paces away from the two blondes. The remnants of the charred woods were just that; all that remained of the lush, teeming forest were smoldering stumps and the patches of singed grass that managed to evade most of the flaming oil.
Naruto snarled at the man in fury, his eyes flickering blue and red as a small trickle of blood began to drip down from his clenched fist, fingernails having penetrated the skin long ago.
"Whoever the hell you are," he muttered out, "I'm finishing this. Right here, right now!"
Naruto was moving again before Boruto could even finish processing his last words, his left hand held back behind him as the atmospheric density rose and rose. The ripples in the air became more and more tangible as they focused themselves above Naruto's outstretched hand, forming the basic Rasengan in a mere blink of the eye. But it kept going – kept spinning, kept swirling, kept hissing with some unknown power. A flicker of white began to blend in with the brightly glowing blue, and the air around the three shinobi began to howl and snarl as the barometric pressure fluctuated wildly under the influence of this new, much more powerful Rasengan.
The churning mass of chakra began to glow a warm orange as it slowly spun faster and faster, before all that was visible to the naked eye was an occasional flash of a wind blade every moment or two. It was a fierce, screaming beacon of energy that manifested itself in less than a quarter of a second… not that Boruto was counting. He was too awestruck by its creation to do anything but clutch the prosthetic and watch what happened from the sidelines.
Naruto's eyes narrowed as they locked on Jiraiya's shocked face, before he shouted out in declaration, sending the rippling orb of chakra sailing through the air.
"Wind Style: Rasenshuriken!"
Naruto smirked internally when the perfect execution of his most prized technique roared to life in his outstretched hand, just itching to inflict pain on whoever it was the dared to endanger himself, his village… and his son.
He watched in slight fascination as the orb of chakra went flying across his fingertips like a shotput, wondering just how, exactly, the Jiraiya impostor was going to escape this one.
The short answer? He wasn't going to.
"NARUTO!"
Naruto's blood pressure dropped.
'Oh shit,' he muttered inside his mind, 'I'm sorry, Kurama. I got kinda emotional back there. And I tend to block out everything when that happens…'
He winced in preparation for the fox's belligerent rebuttal, but froze when something caught his eye.
Time seemed to slow down.
His eyes had to be deceiving him. They had to be.
He never thought he'd ever see what he was currently seeing ever again.
Not since the war.
A yellow flash of light enveloped the clearing, directly in front of the Rasenshuriken as it careened across the earth on a collision course.
Standing in its place as the light faded was Minato Namikaze, the late Fourth Hokage.
"DAMN IT, NARUTO, YOU INSOLENT BRAT!"
And it was then that his tailed beast reached out of his mind and yanked him down inwards, leaving him outwardly unconscious and absolutely confused.
Jiraiya blinked as the raging, swirling, screaming ball of energy - shaped suspiciously like his student's infamous Rasengan - drew closer and closer. The two toads had long since left, not expecting anyone to have actually survived the last assault.
To be honest, Jiraiya didn't expect anyone to have survived either. But then again, these two blondes were just full of surprises.
His mind began to rattle off a few weak suggestions in the short span of time between when the orange-clad man across the clearing lobbed the so-called "Rasenshuriken" at him, but everything led to one final, sad, determined fate.
It was funny, thinking he would go out this way.
There was no way he could dodge this. It was going to hit – and hit hard. Jiraiya could already tell based purely on the condensed chakra alone. The Rasenshuriken could level an entire forest if it had to. There was nothing left in the surrounding area for him to Body Swap with, considering he had just vaporized everything that wasn't bolted to the ground. He could shunshin away, but at this point, he still wouldn't be out of range in time to escape. All of his special toad-based barrier techniques required several hand seals, and he barely had the time to form one.
With a hint of desperation, Jiraiya willed his hand to move to his chest anyways – if he was going to go down, he was going to do so while fighting. A shunshin might not be the best option, but it was all he had.
Then, he remembered Minato's kunai, stored away in the front pocket of his kimono. Instead of moving his fingertips into a half ram seal, he quickly dipped them inside his shirt, and dropped the special tri-pronged blade as quickly as he had dislodged it.
Minato was there before Jiraiya could even blink, appearing in front of him in a flash of bright sunlight.
Instantaneously, the man had a pair of Rasengan in his palms, stretched outwards in a defensive position, as the hissing Rasenshuriken edged closer and closer and closer…
Naruto blinked, as the dark glow of his mindscape came into focus. He was currently sprawled out on the waterlogged floor, staring up at the ceiling that seemed to stretch into eternity.
And standing over him was the absolutely livid Nine-Tailed Fox.
"DAMN IT, NARUTO! I TRIED! I TRIED TO RESPECT OUR BOND, AND NOT FORCE OUR CONNECTION! BUT I CANNOT STAND BEING IGNORED A MOMENT LONGER!"
The Seventh Hokage grimaced as the fox shouted down at him, moving to stand once again. "Okay! Look, I'm sorry! But why did you have to pull me in here, y'know?! I was in the middle of a fight! My son's still out there! Now that I'm out of the picture, who do you think they're going to go for next?"
"IT DOESN'T MATTER!" Kurama snarled, his tails twitching behind him in fury. "If I had half a mind, I would kill you where you stand!" The other tailed beasts had moved off to the side, watching in both amusement and curiosity as the demon and its jinchuuriki interacted.
"What are you talking about, it doesn't matter?!" Now it was Naruto's turn to become livid. "That's my son, damn it! How dare you call him an acceptable loss!"
"Would you just listen to me?! I've been trying to get your attention for the past five minutes! And you've been blowing me off!"
The fox's expression grew slightly sly, as he turned to the side and began to walk away, back into the darkness. "Now I know how your family feels."
Naruto's heart skipped a beat. "W-what? What did you just say, Kurama?"
"I said," the Fox suddenly roared, lunging forward until he was staring Naruto right in the eye, his hot breath rippling through the man's hair, "That you're being a shitty father! And if you'd just listen to what I have to say, you'd be out of this mess!"
Sensing the fox's disparity, Naruto acquiesced. He slumped his shoulders in defeat and sighed. "I… I know. I know I'm being a shitty father, and a shitty jinchuuriki. So… I'm sorry. Okay?" He looked back up and into the narrowed eyes of his partner. "I've… I've just been under a lot of stress the past few hours, y'know? And having to deal with having all nine of you in me is taking a toll on both my physical and mental state. I honestly am having trouble just thinking straight, let alone talk with you while fighting some asshole who thinks he can call himself my godfather and get away with it."
The fox sighed slightly, his eyes softening as he did so. "Eighteen."
Naruto blinked. "Sorry?"
"Eighteen," the fox reaffirmed, leaning back and crossing his arms across his massive upper body. "You said you have nine tailed beasts in you right now. But you actually have eighteen."
A confused heartbeat threatened to burst its way out of Naruto's chest. "W-what are you talking about? There aren't any more than nine in existence! W-well, not including the Ten-Tails, but that was just all of you in one body, right?" He gestured at the other beasts, who, up until this point, had remained silent.
"Brat! Do you seriously believe I didn't realize that myself?" Kurama growled, his red eyes flickering in annoyance. "I wouldn't be telling you this if I wasn't absolutely certain. You can't see them, because we merged together whenever whatever… this is happened. So we have the power of two tailed beasts instead of one currently. It's why you had to jettison so much chakra."
"Why are you telling me this now?! Why not when we were… oh, I don't know… walking? Instead of in the middle of a fucking battle?!"
"Because I wanted to be sure I was right first, you imbecile!" the Nine-Tails roared back, barring his teeth imposingly. "If you thought it was ridiculous, imagine how we felt! But it all makes sense! The fact we're all together in your body again, why you're so fatigued, why you have so much chakra…"
"Kurama, what are you talking about?" Naruto's voice was suddenly worried.
"What I'm saying is, brat, that whatever happened yesterday was much, much worse than either of us thought originally." He narrowed his eyes again. "And it also means that you currently have the chakra capacity of almost two entire Ten-Tailed Beasts inside of you right now."
Naruto's eyes shot open, blue imploringly searching crimson for any signs of deception. When he found none, the man shivered slightly and shook his head in disbelief.
"I… that just…" he sighed in an effort to gather his thoughts. "A-are you serious, Kurama? Two of the Ten-Tails? Is that even-"
"And not just that puny excuse for a Juubi that you ran into during the Fourth War, either," the fox continued, figuring it'd be best to rip the band-aid off in one fell swoop. "That pipsqueak was operating with only a droplet of my chakra. But now…" Kurama sighed heavily, shifting topics as he went. "At your current levels, you have about ninety-five percent of the entire world's chakra capacity in your body right now, as we speak." The beast raised an eyebrow at that. "Honestly, I'm impressed. Were it anyone else, they would have popped like a balloon and taken out half the continent immediately when it happened."
Naruto gulped in surprise, before looking up into the eyes of his Tailed Beast with apprehension. "Okay… so you're saying that I currently have more chakra than anyone else on Earth right now? And isn't that a good thing?"
"Not just anyone on Earth, brat; everyone," the fox corrected. "And no, of course it isn't, you idiot! Don't you see what it's doing to you right now? You can barely focus enough to make shadow clones, and you're fighting those puny weaklings as if it was a friendly spar! You should have been able to wipe them off the map at the bat of an eye!"
"W-wait, why is it bad?!"
"Haven't you heard of diminishing returns?"
"What? What does that have to do with anything? That's economics, not chakra capacity."
Kurama's tails twitched in growing agitation. "The meat sack you humans call a body can only handle so much chakra at a time. After a certain point, it starts doing more harm than good. Almost all of your energy and concentration is being devoted to keeping yourself in balance."
Naruto stood silent for a moment, before shaking his head and narrowing his eyes. "So I just have to figure out a way of reducing my chakra amount until I'm back to the point where I can function normally, right?"
The fox blinked in surprise. "Actually, yes," he ceded. "But you're missing the problem entirely! Don't you see what's wrong with this picture?!"
"Well, for one, I have to deal with all nine of you – all eighteen of you, technically - for the foreseeable future," Naruto mumbled, "And I have to figure out what to do with all of your chakra until then."
"No, you idiot!" the beast roared suddenly. "The problem is that this should be impossible! You're currently carrying around more chakra than has ever existed, ever! All at once, in one place! It's not natural! You're a time bomb, Naruto!"
Naruto frowned, then nodded in agreement. "Yeah, you're right. This is impossible. At least, it should be impossible."
Kurama sighed, a low grumble of agitation echoing past his lips. "Yes… it should be impossible. And yet here we are." He looked up from the ground and met Naruto's eyes once again, this time full of deliberation. "But with recent developments, I have a feeling I know what's going on."
"What? What's going on?"
The fox grumbled something under his breath, as if he refused to believe it himself. Regardless, he narrowed his eyes and flared his nostrils.
"Time travel."
Naruto's slightly anticipative expression flatlined in an instant. "You can't be serious."
"It makes sense, brat! Two sets of each tailed beast, occupying the same realm at the same time, one overwriting the other. You're continuously running into relics of your past. The pieces all fit, Naruto."
The Hokage's skin began to pale as realization sunk into his bones. "Wait… so you're saying…"
"That those two people you're fighting – the blond brat that sealed me into you in the first place, and your ridiculous white-haired freak of a sensei – they're real, yes. All their skills, all their abilities. And they're angry."
Naruto's heart leapt into his throat, his eyes wavering ever so slightly in the dimly lit hall. "So… that man that just appeared… is my father? Is actually my father?"
He froze in realization.
"And he's going to try to kill me, and my son…"
Minato wasn't exactly sure what he was getting into when he teleported into the battle. It was one of the bigger drawbacks of using his Hiraishin over such long distances; he was never truly sure what would await him on the other side. For several months, he had been working on a way to somehow channel a small bit of chakra from the blade back to his body, and he had actually succeeded in doing that much. It was what allowed him to sense when someone had thrown it. However, his further experiments to somehow allow himself to glean a bit of information from the area surrounding the kunai upon the chakra retrieval proved fruitless.
So, Minato was forced to rely on his incredible reaction time to use the Flying Thunder God to its fullest effect. There was a reason why Hiraishin was considered an S-ranked forbidden technique, and it wasn't just because of how difficult it was to master.
Although that was a large part of it.
And so, when he saw the massive orb of strangely familiar swirling chakra heading straight for both him and Jiraiya, he did the only thing he knew how to do.
He summoned forth two perfect Rasengan, and braced himself for the impact.
Time slowed down. He knew that it was simply a result of the adrenaline coursing through his veins, but it was still rather annoying. Now the world was moving at a snail's pace, trickling along like a stubborn spring. He could watch the beads of sweat on his opponent's face manifest themselves into beads, each threatening to meander their way down his chin by the force of gravity. He could watch the smoke from the smoldering piles of ash that were once trees drift up into the sky like beacons. He could see each individual swirl of chakra in the oncoming projectile, make out each individual detail…
Wait!
Was that wind chakra?
In a Rasengan?
Minato floundered for a minute, caught up in his surprise as he continued to watch the enemy's jutsu careen towards him. Well, it felt like a minute. To most outsiders, the Fourth's very obvious shock was evident for less than a hundredth of a second – simply a flash across his face.
The moment the other Rasengan connected with his, he knew immediately that it would not withstand the incredible force. But he had already committed to it; he had no other options left. He could always try to reach behind him and grab Jiraiya in an attempt to Hiraishin them out of range, but not even he was that fast. He could always leave Jiraiya behind, but… then he may as well turn in his coat and headband. He wasn't fit to be Hokage, or even a Leaf ninja at that point.
The wind-based Rasengan was already tunneling through his own, and he was very quickly reaching entropy. To drop the jutsus now was certain death.
They were set to burst at any moment.
And then, Minato caught the sight of the strange, orange-shrouded man toppling to the floor from his peripheral vision. The strange orb of offending chakra began to dwindle and fade as the man slipped into unconsciousness across the battlefield, until all it took was a very forced push of chakra from Minato's palms to disrupt its fragile balance.
That didn't mean it didn't explode, however.
Minato held his hand out in front of his face as the clearing lit up like the sun, vibrant beams of bright white light ricocheting off of his eyelids and burning into his retina. He quickly averted his gaze to avoid damaging his eyesight, before executing a quick seal-less shunshin, appearing behind Jiraiya, and whisking them off to a kunai he had left a few hundred feet away.
Once the visible blast wave dispersed, Minato and Jiraiya returned to the scene. The strange blonde-haired man was still lying motionless on the compacted dirt, seemingly unharmed by the explosion. Minato immediately moved to secure the man. There was not a chance in hell he would not be taking advantage of his opponent's incapacitation. It was simply protocol; although Minato had no idea what it was specifically that had caused the man to slump over prematurely, an opportunity was an opportunity.
As Minato began to walk towards his doppelganger, he subtly watched as the man's son, the one he had seen a little less than twenty-four hours prior in his office, came hobbling over from his previous hiding spot. He gingerly held his bandaged leg with one hand, a kunai tightly in the other, eyes blistering with determination.
"Wait! Don't hurt him! Please don't hurt my dad!"
Minato blinked at the boy's plea. Was he seriously trying to bargain for this man's life? The man who had nearly singlehandedly killed Jiraiya in less than ten minutes?
No. He was a liability. He had to be apprehended.
"P-please…"
The boy - named 'Boruto', if Minato remembered correctly – had a look of terror on his face as he walked up to the Fourth Hokage, trembling slightly as he did so. Minato had to admit that Boruto was being incredibly brave – he was only twelve, maybe thirteen, and was blatantly standing up against the only man in the history of the Five Great Nations known to have a 'flee on sight' addendum to his bingo book profile.
"You know I can't allow that. This man - your father, I'm to understand? – has committed crimes against the Leaf. He needs to be detained and taken into custody."
Boruto blinked in obvious surprise, taking a step back in confusion. "What? N-no he hasn't! I've been with him for the past two days straight! I would have known if he did something bad, y'know!"
Minato narrowed his eyes, subtly filing away the fact that the child had a verbal tick very similar to his wife's for later digestion. "Your father, whoever he is, is clearly an S-ranked ninja. I can tell that much even without checking the bingo book. It is very likely that if he didn't want you to see something, you would have never known."
The boy suddenly let out a scoff, averting his gaze. "Pshh. Isn't that the truth."
Raising an eyebrow, Minato took a step forward, attempting to take advantage of Boruto's redirected attention to disarm him before he did something reckless. Minato moved slowly and deliberately, pausing briefly as Boruto jumped in alarm when the boy realized what was happening. When he made no move to act irrationally, Minato continued to inch his hand forward, before suddenly snagging the kunai from the boy's quaking hands.
"There. See? No problem." Minato let a small smile grace his lips in reassurance, as the boy's eyes began to quiver.
Then, they lit up in recognition. "H-hey, wait a second… I know you! You look… really familiar."
Minato let out a slight chuckle at that, his eyes turning upwards in mirth. "Honestly, I'd be surprised if you didn't. My face is probably smeared across wanted posters and bingo books all over the rest of the world. Wherever you're from, I've almost certainly got a bounty on my head there."
The blonde man could nearly see the gears in the boy's head turn as they stood there, before he jumped in realization and took a step back. "Wait… wait, no, that's not right. You can't be him."
"How do you mean?" Now it was Minato's turn to be confused. These two blonde shinobi, whoever they were and wherever they yielded from, were certainly quite the enigma.
Boruto shook his head again, pinching his eyelids shut briefly before slamming them open again. "I'm dreaming, right? I have to be!"
"Hey," Minato said softly, holding a hand out as a peaceful gesture. "Don't panic. We're not going to hurt you. I just need you to cooperate, okay? It's better for everyone if you do things our way."
"N-no!" Boruto took a step back, looking up at Minato with fear in his eyes. "I… I don't know who you are, but you're not the Fourth Hokage!"
"Yeah, and the other one kept saying that I wasn't the real Jiraiya, either," came a gruff voice from Minato's right. When he looked up, he saw the imposing form of Jiraiya, arms crossed, standing beside him. The Toad Sage turned and met Minato's gaze, a slight hint of confusion hidden within. "Well, what do you think we should do, Minato?"
"Why do you think we're not who we say we are?" the Hokage suddenly asked, turning back to look at the boy – who shrunk back slightly on reflex. Sensing the child's fear, he gave a small smile, and kneeled down to meet Boruto eye-to-eye. Minato wasn't a particularly tall man, but one's legacy seemed to amplify things like height and power in face-to-face meetings. "Please don't be afraid. I'm not going to hurt you. I'm just curious."
"Y-you can't be real," Boruto mumbled, eyebrows scrunching up in the middle of his forehead, "Because the real Minato Namikaze is dead." He turned to Jiraiya, then. "I don't really know who you are, although I recognize your face from somewhere too. But I know you're not around anymore either."
Jiraiya sweatdropped. "Of course. Everyone knows the venerable Fourth Hokage, but nobody bothers to remember the humble master who took the man under his wing and taught him everything he knew."
Minato had to resist the urge to roll his eyes. They were still in a tense situation, after all. Regardless, he couldn't resist the urge to let out a small quip, a smile gracing his lips. "You could have always taken the job instead of me, Sensei."
"What?! Are you crazy?" Jiraiya gaped, taking a step back in recoil. "You know I couldn't do that! I have things to do! Places to be! People to see!"
"Naked people," Minato muttered under his breath, as he turned his attention back to the boy, who was simply watching the exchange with slight confusion. "Now, you say I'm dead. But I, at least, know very well that that isn't the case. Well, not yet, anyways." He offered a tentative smile at that, as he rubbed at the back of his neck.
Boruto tensed up suddenly, before his cold, electric-blue eyes met Minato's in a determined glare. "Then prove it."
Minato blinked. "Uhh, prove it?"
"Yeah. If you're really the Fourth Hokage, then prove it."
That took Minato by surprise.
Jiraiya, however was having none of it. "Come on, brat. The Hokage's not a circus clown."
"Wait, Sensei," Minato gently interrupted, holding a hand out to his side to silence the man. "I'm curious. What would you have me do to prove I'm who I say I am? If it'll help you cooperate."
Boruto narrowed his eyes in contemplation, before subtly smirking. "Alright. If you can prove you're real, I'll come quietly. I'll get my idiot dad to do it too, somehow… when the asshole wakes up, anyways. As long as you promise not to hurt us."
"Consider it done," Minato nodded.
"Alright then." Boruto took a hesitant step forward, shifting his weight off of his bad leg with a wince. "The real Fourth Hokage is the only man on Earth that can perform the Hiraishin technique flawlessly. Do that, and I'll-"
Boruto wasn't even done with his sentence before Minato vanished in a bright yellow flash, appearing across the clearing at a kunai he had thrown moments prior. He plucked the knife from the earth, before flicking it across the battlefield an instant later, rematerializing just in time to snatch it out of the sky before it cut through Boruto's hair.
"How's that?" He smiled, not even out of breath in the slightest.
Boruto couldn't help but gape, as the white-haired jounin beside the two blondes scoffed and wrinkled his nose.
"Pshh. Showoff."
Minato smiled warmly over his shoulder. "You're just disappointed because you still don't understand the Hiraishin, even after spending nearly a year on it."
"That's not true! It was more like nine months, and I was working on other things! I couldn't have possibly figured it out in that little amount of time!"
Minato chose to ignore his sensei, instead focusing his attention on the boy in front of him. "Well? Is that proof enough for you?"
Boruto nodded dumbly, still visibly surprised that the Hiraishin was real, let alone just executed flawlessly in front of him. "Y-yeah. I'd ask you to do the Rasengan, too, but I saw you use that against my dad's, so I know it's real." He gave Minato a cheeky, tooth-filled grin at that. "So I guess you are the Fourth Hokage. In that case, where've you been for the past 40 years?! The village is gonna be super excited to see you! My dad's gonna have to step down, and we'll have to figure out what to do with all the extra heads on the monument, and then the village will throw a big party, and maybe-"
Jiraiya rolled his eyes as Boruto began to ramble on about things that made no sense whatsoever, and quickly moved behind the boy to swiftly knock him out. It would be easier, at least in his mind, to transport the pair of unruly blondes if they were both unconscious.
However, just as his hand was millimeters away from the back of Boruto's neck, a firm, tanned hand slapped around his wrist and pulled, painfully.
"Touch him, and you die. I don't care who you are."
"Please, I would rather not escalate this any further than necessary," Minato monotonously stated, face once more steeled and primed for whatever was soon to come. He watched as the recently reawakened blond man's eyes softened at his voice, and Jiraiya was soon freed from the grasp.
"D-dad?!" Boruto jumped back a bit from the scene, startled by the fact that Jiraiya had tried to render him unconscious. His father gave him a small smile and a subtle wink, which reassured him greatly, before turning back to the pair of legendary shinobi.
Minato watched as the man reflexively took a position between them and his son, lone arm held in a hardened fist. To his surprise, the man spoke first. "Look… I'm sorry about what just happened earlier. It was… just a big misunderstanding. I'm assuming you would like to take us in for questioning, but you'll have to understand that I cannot divulge too much information."
Then, the man's son tugged at his arm, redirecting his attention. "Dad… I may have told them that we'd come quietly if they proved they were real. That guy's the Fourth Hokage, I think – and I still don't know who this asshole is." Boruto cast a killer glare at Jiraiya, who just put his hands up in a placating manner and stepped back a bit.
"Yeah… I know." Naruto sighed and cracked his neck, shifting his gaze down to his son. "They're real. I didn't think they were at first, but… but they're real. It's a long story."
Minato watched the small family interact, and a pang in his heart reminded him of his primary objective there. The slightly endearing look on his face evaporated almost instantly, and he narrowed his eyes at the blond man in front of him.
"What did you do to her."
Naruto jumped in surprise – at the fact that Minato had asked him a question in that harsh, untrusting tone, and at the question itself. "I-I'm sorry?"
"My wife. What did you do to her."
Naruto just raised a confused eyebrow. "I'm sorry, Da-erm, Hokage-sama, but I have no idea what you're talking about."
Minato's gaze turned furious – not that most people would know what that looked like. It was a side of the Namikaze that hardly ever came out… and even when it did, Minato's calm demeanor made it quite difficult to differentiate from his other moods. "Don't bother. I know you're lying to me. Now tell me what you did to Kushina, and we can put all this behind us."
Naruto's eyes widened in shock as his father began to question him like a petty thief, his eyes boring into his own. It was incredibly surprising, especially from someone like Minato, but Naruto deduced that there was more behind his father's promotion to Hokage than just physical prowess.
He knew that all too well himself, after all.
"Tell me. Now. Whatever you did to Kushina, is it reversible?"
His heart leapt into his throat at the name of his mother.
His mother.
If they were really back in time, and his father was here, then it made sense that his mom would be as well. Out of both of his parents, Kushina was the one that he honestly wished he could speak more with. Their brief communication back at the very beginning of the Fourth War was something he replayed in his mind on an almost daily basis, and every time, he wished it could have been longer.
It seemed that fate had deemed him worthy.
"What's… what's wrong with her? That might help me figure out what you're talking about."
Minato's eyes narrowed dangerously, before he sighed slightly and acquiesced. "She's in a coma. Has been for almost twelve hours. Now don't play dumb with me. Please."
A small knot in Naruto's stomach twisted into place, as if his subconscious mind had figured something out and was refusing to tell him the rest.
"A… a coma?" he murmured, eyebrows pursed together in thought. Something was wrong here…
"Brat," Kurama suddenly interjected, "Tell me this. If I told you that we're back in time, and that you have the power of the Tailed Beasts from both our time and this one, what do you think happened to the originals?"
Naruto's eyes nearly fell from their sockets.
"Oh… oh no…"
"Yeah. 'Oh no'. I was never a big fan of that habanero brat, but she's your kin. Out of respect for you, I advise you do something to save her, and fast."
'What can I even do?! I guess I can split your chakra in two and give her half, but how are we to know that what happened when we got here, whenever we got here, won't just happen again?"
"As painful as it is to suggest it, you can always perform a yin-yang split. That, at least, will maintain itself after the transference has been performed."
Naruto blinked in surprise. "Kurama? Are you sure? Are you sure you want to do that?"
"Until we can figure something else out, it should be fine."
A tender smile wormed its way onto Naruto's face. "…Thanks, Kurama. You're truly an amazing person."
"Hmph. Don't get used to it. And don't compare me to your ridiculous species."
"Does he always do this?"
Naruto jumped when he realized he had been staring off into space for a moment or two, and that Minato was giving him a strange look – one mixed with confusion, anger, and worry.
The Seventh Hokage rolled his shoulders and took a deep breath. "Okay. I think I can fix this." He paused for a moment to think, then nodded. "Two birds with one stone, actually. Take me to her, and I can reverse… whatever it was, exactly, that happened to her."
Minato's eyes narrowed. "So you do know what happened to her."
Naruto pinched the bridge of his nose as he began to walk towards the village, the others falling into line behind him. "Look, I don't know what caused what happened, all I know is that the Nine-Tails' seal malfunctioned somehow. That's the extent-"
When he felt the cold blade of a kunai pressed against his jugular, Naruto froze. Minato's voice was rigid and calm in his ear, but still very much livid.
"How did you know that? Kushina's jinchuuriki status is an S-ranked secret. To speak of it so lightly is punishable by death."
Naruto just smirked. It wouldn't hurt to tell some of the truth, he supposed. "Relax, Hokage-sama. I know my kin when I see them."
The kunai at his neck fell immediately. The Seventh turned slightly on his heel to look back behind him, only to see Minato standing back a bit, eying him suspiciously, with a slight bit of surprise in his eyes.
Followed by disbelief.
"Wait, you're a jinchuuriki too? Of which Tailed Beast?"
Naruto smiled sheepishly, reaching behind his neck with his hand and scratching his hair. "Ehh, heh, it's a long story, a story I'm honestly not entirely sure of yet myself." He quickly changed the subject. "Let's just get this over with. The sooner we get to her, the better her chances."
He turned completely and looked at his son authoritatively. "Boruto, do you have my arm?" When the boy nodded in the affirmative and held it up for his father to see, Naruto smiled and turned back around.
"Why should we trust you?"
This time, Naruto's gaze hardened, as he looked out onto the horizon, where the massive frame of the Hokage Monument began to rise up from the Earth like an obelisk.
"Right now, I'm the only chance you've got at saving your wife." He began to walk again, eyes narrowing fiercely.
"And I'm saving that woman's life. I promise you that much. Whether you trust me or not is irrelevant."
"YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!"
The sound of her voice echoed through the white emptiness around her for a moment, before uncannily disappearing like a whisper. The stifling vastness of the blank, white void was driving Kushina insane; if something didn't happen, and quickly, then she was going to have to take drastic measures.
…Not that she knew what drastic measures she should take, if she was honest with herself. But whatever actions she did take would sure as hell be drastic, if she had anything to say about it!
The redhead slouched back over again, lying down on the crystal white floor of what she could only assume was purgatory. "This is useless."
Then, she shot up again, eyes wide. "Oh shit. I have work in the morning."
Back down again. "Oh well. I'm pretty sure Minato can get someone else to deliver that letter."
And up again. "But I'm the best qualified for that mission, damn it!"
And down. "I guess it's better to give someone else the opportunity…"
And up. "But I can do it solo! They're gonna have to hire an entire team, and it's gonna be annoying, and…"
And back down again. "Oh, whatever. It's just a stupid delivery mission. Although I would have liked to have seen the Hidden Sand again, it's pretty there. Yeesh… I haven't been to the Sand in what, four years?"
Kushina froze.
"Wait, was that…"
When she felt a gust of wind strike her face for the second time in what felt like two eternities, she nearly whooped in happiness. "YES! Something other than boring white! Not today, Kami! Not today!"
A blurry outline manifested itself on the horizon, as she strained to make out its shape. It wasn't too large; only about the size of a relatively tall man. It was the color of the man's hair that gave her tremendous hope.
"…Minato?"
The specter chuckled and materialized completely in front of her, rubbing his hand through his blonde hair. "Ehh, no. Sorry. But he's here with me though! I'm here to try and fix whatever it was that happened to you. Are you okay?"
Kushina took a step back and frowned. "Who are you? I've never seen you before."
She could have sworn she heard the man whisper "not yet" underneath his breath, but he was already speaking properly by the time she was about to make her rebuttal. "I'm a friend, I promise. Like I said, I'm here to help." He gave her a smile that could have melted even the iciest heart, and offered her his hand.
Begrudgingly, she accepted it. It wasn't like she had much of a choice.
As he helped her to her feet, she took a moment to observe her "savior". He was an impressively tall man; that much was obvious. His hair was disheveled and looked like it had never come into contact with a comb in its entire life, as well as slightly singed at the edges. His clothes, if you could even call them that, were in tatters, barely hanging off of his slight frame like rags. To her surprise, she noted that he was an amputee – for what reason, she was unsure. From what was left of his right arm, she could guess that it was a wound from long ago. Perhaps a childhood ailment?
Otherwise, most of his other notable features, save for his bright blue eyes, were blurred by whatever technique he was using to talk to her. It was slightly disconcerting, but she, strangely enough, felt a strong urge to trust the man.
"So…" she began tentatively, narrowing her eyes at him. "Where exactly am I? And what's the plan?"
The blondie pursed his lips in thought, turning to the side and observing his surroundings. "Hmm, I'd say by the feel of this place, this is your mindscape. Well, what's left of it, anyway."
Kushina nodded in acceptance. "Yeah, that makes sense. I thought this place felt familiar. Any ideas as to why I'm trapped here? And why it looks like a wasteland?"
The man narrowed his eyebrows. "From what I can tell, something went wrong with your seal. The Nine-Tails… moved elsewhere, and left you here with nothing in the seal. In order to protect your mind from whatever side-effects are involved with a tailed beast extraction of this type, it trapped your mind here in the process. Either that, or your mind did it itself. It's not really clear." He rubbed behind his head in that funny way that Minato always did, smiling slightly in embarrassment. "Regardless, you're fine."
"Wait, did you say the Nine-Tails escaped?!" Kushina yelped in surprise, grabbing the man by the upper arms and rattling him slightly. "What?! Is everyone okay? Is Minato-"
"Relax," the man stressed, placing his own hand on her shoulder – a feat that was easier for him to do than for her, considering he was a solid head taller than she was. "Everything's fine. We were able to… apprehend the Nine-Tails, and he's safe."
Kushina raised an eyebrow. "I don't give a damn if he's safe or not. As far as I'm concerned, he's not even a he. Just an obnoxiously hostile piece of crap that only cares about himself, y'know?"
She couldn't be sure, but she thought she saw the man's eyes flash in indignation for a split second, but by the time she turned properly to look him in the eye, it was gone again. "Hmm, I suppose," was all he said in response.
"Well alright then, so long as nothing's awry top-side." She shrugged her shoulders and the two sat in awkward silence for a moment, before Kushina snapped her fingers and looked at Blondie questioningly. "Wait a second… if the Nine-Tails left my body, how the hell am I still alive? I thought an extraction was a death sentence?!"
Another knowing look from the man was her response at first, before he rattled his head for a moment and gave her a small smile. "Actually, it's the breaking of the seal that kills the jinchuuriki. Not the extraction itself – although the two are typically one in the same, really."
Kushina raised an eyebrow. "So you're saying that the seal wasn't broken. But the Nine-Tails was extracted anyways. I didn't think that was even possible."
"Neither did I, until today," the other man muttered, shaking his head slightly. "It's been a… weird day, I'll tell you that much."
"Yeah, I'll say."
"…"
"…"
Blondie clapped his hands together with a smile, then, finally tired of the awkward silences between the two of them. "Alright then! Hopefully this works. I've never done it for real before. Just in practice."
Kushina narrowed her eyes at him. "Wait, what are you saying? Why the hell are you the one doing this then, if you've never done this before?! What even are you going to do? Where the hell's Minato?"
"Easier this way," was all he said, as he moved his lone arm up to his chest and began to work his way through a series of one-handed hand seals. Kushina was impressed; it took a tremendous amount of willpower and chakra control to properly pull off one-handed seals – something that typically took years to master. Hell, her husband, a genius in his own right, wasn't able to get them down after a solid year. He could do them now, just not with any particular gusto. With a few more months of training, though…
"Alright!" Blondie exclaimed in preparation. "I'm gonna give you back Furball now. Be nice to each other, got it?"
Kushina opened her mouth and closed it a few times in surprise as the colloquial mention of her prisoner, before she felt the bland white edges of her mindscape begin to twist and melt away, revealing a harsh rocky surface. A tremendous pool of lava reappeared in a deep, cavernous ravine beneath her, above which floated a massive stone boulder, riddled with chains and broken restraints. And it was unoccupied.
So it was true, then.
The Nine-Tails had broken out somehow.
"Seal!"
It only took an instant, but Kushina was still startled at the feeling of having an entire entity of chakra shoved back into her gut like the stuffing to a toy. She squirmed a little in place as a wave or two of nausea washed over her, before everything settled into place once again. Her mind looked like hell, her sense of being had returned, she had a way out…
…and the Nine-Tailed Fox was standing next to her, looking bored.
And he was unrestrained.
"Gyaaah!" she yelped, quickly moving through a few hand seals of her own on instinct. A moment later, a series of massive adamantine chains burst from the ground, flying through the air at breakneck speeds, beginning to surround and subdue the beast before he did anything reckless…
…such as pop back out of her like a balloon.
"What the hell?!" both Blondie and Kushina exclaimed simultaneously, each glaring at one another as the chains began to wrap around the increasingly agitated demon fox beside them.
"Naruto!" the fox snarled in indignation. "What is the meaning of this?!"
"Relax, Kurama!" Blondie shot back, not breaking eye Kushina's eye contact in the slightest. "Now, Kushina, I need you to relax. Let him go."
"What in the name of Kami are you on right now?! Not a chance in hell!"
"He's a friend! Don't chain him up like that!"
Kushina nearly snarled at him. "And what, let him roam around my mind like some sort of vagrant? Let him pop out of me whenever he feels so inclined? No!"
Blondie sighed, and shook his head. "Look… you only have a half of the fox. The other half is in me. He's not been locked up inside of me for the past…" He paused for a second to think, "…two, erm… days. I trust him. You should too."
But Kushina wasn't having any of it. "Take him back, then. I'd rather die than let that… that monster free."
Blondie sighed again, shaking his head slightly this time. "Fine. I'll give him one chain. One!" He shot a glance at the fox before it could make a rebuttal, "Alright! You'll be fine with just one. Okay?" He turned back to Kushina. "Does that sound good? The seal will be just as strong as before, I promise."
When Kushina sensed no malicious intent coming from the man, she begrudgingly agreed. "Fine. As long as the seal's still intact."
As the chains around the Nine-Tails began to retract, a simple ball-and-chain wrapped itself around the beast's rear paw, which he grumbled incoherently about for a moment before settling in for a nap.
"Hmph," Blondie grumbled, "Lazy asshole."
Kushina was inclined to agree.
"Alright then," the man smiled, looking down at her with his hand on his hip. "Shall we head back out again? Keeping this technique up for an extended period of time is seriously frazzling my chakra coils."
With a small eyeroll - coupled with a smile - Kushina nodded and vanished, returning to the land of the living.