11 - Red Eyes and Snakes (4)
In the Uzukage's office, nine elders were gathered, along with the Uzukage, his wife, Megumi, Kaji, Hinata and Naruto. Gendou said, against the evidence Megumi revealed him:
"I see... this is bad..."
Hinata saw Naruto's belly, blushed at the sight of his abs, but also nervous at the presence of the terrible seal. She understood immediately that the warm red energy he had came from this seal, and it was his greatest blessing... and his most terrible curse...
Megumi said:
"Naruto's parents made this seal, but somehow the seal is incomplete..."
Naruto was shocked to death, and Hinata was surprised:
"My... m-my parents?"
Kaori nodded and said:
"This red energy from the Nine-Tails is incomplete..."
Hinata saw how Naruto lowered his head, as if he was sorry that Hinata heard his terrible secret. She understood many things, and she jumped to hug him with all her tenderness. Naruto didn't expect this reaction from her; he expected her to do as everyone else, rejecting her in fear or hatred. Hinata simply hugged him and whispered at him:
"I... I won't let that damn fox get the best of you..."
Naruto let a tear fall, returning the hug to Hinata as he said:
"And I won't let this damn fox hurt you..."
An Uzumaki elder, a man with long gray hair and red moustache, said:
"The young Kushina and her lovely husband could only seal the Yang energy of the Nine-Tails inside him... where is his Yin energy?"
Gendou said, nodding:
"Kushina had the whole Tailed Beast sealed inside of her; perhaps when she gave birth to Naruto it was released from her weakened seal, but who could be powerful enough to separate the Fox's chakra like that?"
The Yamanaka elder, a woman with long white hair and a hair strand covering her left eye, looked at Naruto's eyes and said, after a few seconds of a sustained stare:
"Perhaps he could ask them directly; they left their energy inside of him..." Naruto's eyes opened wide: "...but this is something that he has to do on his own, as it's something particularly risky for his life..."
Hinata was at Naruto's side, and as he gulped in fear and excitement, she said:
"I... I-I think you should do it, Naruto... you need this..."
Naruto nodded and said:
"I'll do it... but... what do I have to do?"
Sasuke walked on his own, heading towards the Uchiha training grounds. He was thinking about all what happened that evening, the apparition of Tsuki, his very only friend among the Uchiha of their age; the fact that she had survived, and that she seemed not only to keep him alive and well, but also seemed to be the one to try being his voice of the consciousness, completely unheard... what he couldn't understand was why she defended Itachi, the one who killed their families... he needed to understand this at all costs; now he truly doubted what Itachi meant him to understand from the whole assassination of their family and the preservation of Tsuki...
His head hurt badly, and then he remembered the very last thing that brought him so many questions: the thing of the 'true secrets' of the Clan, and how Tsuki's eyes changed from the familiar red with black dots to a cerulean with white dots... what was that technique... was it something that he could achieve... why no one ever mentioned it, not even the Clan's Tables...
He went to sleep, careful of his surroundings, yet completely clueless of Tsuki, who kept watching him with hope...
In a cave, in an unknown place, a masked man met with the orange-haired man, and both spoke seriously:
"Itachi is going to meet with Sasuke now..."
The masked man nodded:
"It's of our greatest interest to keep a watchful eye on them; whoever makes it out of this battle must be immediately seized, Pain..."
Pain, the orange-haired man, replied:
"The Stealing Eyes are the weapon we need to complete the project we have to reunite the world under our protection..."
The masked man raised a hand and a man appeared, his right side of the body was black, his left side was white, his head was covered by a strange carnivorous-plant-like appendix:
"Zetsu, go to the Uchiha training grounds and keep a careful watch over Itachi and Sasuke. Whoever makes it must come to me, carrying the corpse of the dead one. Nobody else must have access to the scene."
Zetsu's white side said:
"Sure, master."
The black side replied with a dark, raspy voice:
"This will be certainly fun..."
Zetsu melted with the rock and left that place. Pain looked at him and said:
"Sasori and Deidara are ready to capture the One-Tail's bearer. Shall we send them now?"
The masked man shook his head:
"Not yet. I'd like to have the results of this brother-versus-brother battle first. The One-Tail is the Fifth Kazekage, so taking him out will not be that easy; after all, the Hidden Sand Village is a Great Ninja Village, not like the Hidden Grass, and it's going to be a lot more difficult to pull a play like Hidan did."
Pain nodded patiently and seriously.
Tsunade, Shizune and Sakura ran at a rather frantic pace, heading out of the Hidden Leaf Village's terrain of influence. The ex-Hokage was particularly upset, and Sakura felt that the trip was particularly silent, too silent for her. Having Naruto in her group was something that accustomed her to a noisy environment, and she missed his noise so badly now...
Tsunade began to head east, which surprised Sakura:
"Where are we-"
Shizune interrupted her with a death glare, and Sakura gulped. Certainly, this would be a very silent field trip...
Naruto had willingly entered his inner sewers as he followed the elders' advice. He felt loads of fear, as he had some time without entering his own mindscape. There he was: the wild and evil Nine-Tailed Fox, the dreaded demon of ancient times, locked in a steel cage by a seal tag that simply said: "Do not remove". 'Heh! Quite a simple one, right? Foolproof...'
He then decided to attract the attention of the Tailed Beast:
"Yo! Fox!"
The grunt was scary enough to make him step back:
"What do you want, you stupid kid? Are you searching for your own death?"
Naruto knew that the Fox couldn't kill him right now, but he knew that it could kill him whenever it wanted. He just said:
"I'll get this seal off; I'm tired of this shit!"
The fox saw Naruto get close to the tag and growled a chuckle:
"Nh, nh, nh, so the knucklehead decided to give up in the end... it's your death, jackass..."
Naruto took off the seal and began to feel how the seal in his belly began to liberate monstrous amounts of energy, but when he was about to lose himself, the seal was immediately shut down. When Naruto recovered his consciousness, he saw the Fourth Hokage and his beautiful redhead wife, which shocked him half to death:
"Fourth Hokage?! And his wife?! Why are you here?!"
The red-headed lady looked at him and said, smiling with a chuckle, over the curses and yells of the Fox:
"The kid came out as foolish as me... how cute..."
A shocked and upset Minato asked:
"What the hell were you thinking, Naruto?"
Naruto simply stood up and punched them both: first him, then her. The Nine-Tailed Fox, who seemed to be wrathful, suddenly shut up, detailing the scene. Seeing them on the floor, Naruto claimed:
"I don't know why you're here, or why you did this, but I hate you both!"
Minato and Kushina fell on the ground, stumped by the reaction of the blond teenager:
"What was that for, brat?!"
"Naruto?!"
Naruto was upset, crying, and the Fox began to chuckle in a terrifying way:
"Beautiful family reunion! I'll make you pay, Minato! I'll take your son and-"
In an unison yell, scarier than the own Tailed Beast, the three yelled back at it:
"SHUT UP, YOU FOOL!!!"
The almighty Nine-Tailed Fox, the Prince of Demons, the most powerful creature on Earth, was forced to shut up by a human family, and it could do nothing to avoid it. After the yell, Naruto finally came to realize what the Fox had said:
"Wait a minute... d-did the stupid fox here call me 'your son', Fourth Hokage?" Minato nodded: "I cannot be your son..."
Kushina asked:
"Why not? You both are identical!"
"No, I'm not..." Both noticed how he started crying: "You were a genius, a legendary ninja whose power, intelligence and skills were simply extra awesome, and I'm such a mess, incapable of growing beyond Genin, incapable of learning at school, at controlling my chakra; damn! Even that fool of Sasuke could control elements before I could even start to learn how to fight!" Before they could answer, a bitter Naruto continued, clenching his fists: "Also, i-if I were your son, the H-Hidden Leaf villagers wouldn't have tried to murder me every single day or night, wouldn't have let me starving or in pain, wouldn't have rejected me and pushed me away... it's logical, isn't it?! Why would they despise the son of their greatest hero ever?!"
Sakura kept walking down the path that Tsunade made her follow, still in silence. Finally, they camped, and Tsunade finally spoke:
"I think we're safe here. Let's begin to-"
All of a sudden, Tsunade was surrounded by five porcelain-masked men, all armed with blades and daggers, and both Shizune and Sakura were trapped in the eye illusion of a terrifying Danzou, who appeared out of nowhere and kept them both trapped. Tsunade claimed:
"Leave them alone, Danzou!"
He was cold as always, but his killer intent was even greater today:
"Tell me where Uzumaki is right now or I'll kill them."
Tsunade saw how Sakura and Shizune began to cry, paralyzed as they were, and Tsunade growled:
"Will you not even spare innocents to fulfill your ambitions? Do you truly care for the Leaf?"
"I care for the Leaf even more than any Hokage, and you know it better than anyone; that's why I protect it in the shadows, and why no one ever dares to shut my ROOT program down: we're effective and necessary..."
Tsunade simply lowered her head and said:
"Then you'll have to kill me; I don't know where he is..."
"If that's how it'll be, then so be it. We shouldn't lose great assets like yourself for the sake of keeping us whole, but if fate claims it like this..."
Danzou made a nod and the five ninjas quickly stabbed her, but then Danzou was trapped by a giant toad tongue, not being able to move:
"Jiraiya!! You're betraying your village too?!"
Shizune and Sakura woke up, their spirits already down, to see how those five masked ninjas stabbed Tsunade to death and then jumped towards the giant frog, being kicked and taken out by an upset Jiraiya, whose giant toad trapped the recently named Sixth Hokage:
"Take care of Tsunade; I'll deal with this scum!"
Sakura and Shizune began to put hands to work, checking the wounds and preparing everything they had with them to heal her. Jiraiya simply jumped towtds the toad's tongue and, as it released Danzou, he began with a kick to his head, especially his right eye. Danzou, who seemed quiet, let him do until his right arm was released from a particularly heavy armor piece, revealing six Stealing Eyes planted along his arm:
"So you've profitted a lot from the Uchiha massacre?! Have you no shame?!"
Danzou nodded, one of his arms' eyes closing shut:
"No, I don't, and that's why I'm more fit for the charge of Hokage. Now, if you want to defend your friend, then I'll make you share their fate."
The Stealing Eye of Danzou's face turned into a four-pointed star, and Jiraiya began looking at the floor. He wasn't as stupid as to look him in the eye, and he had learned from Mighty Guy this way of fighting against a Stealing Eye. Danzou saw this and realized that the Toad Sage was ready to fight him and he decided not to take risks:
"Well, you can be considered immediately as a missing-ninja, Jiraiya, and I hope you have fun with the Desert Scorpion poison." Jiraiya growled: "Shizune! Sakura! We're heading back!"
Shizune and Sakura stood firm, interrupting everything they were doing to save Tsunade and, like hypnotized, started walking behind Danzou. Jiraiya saw them leave and could do nothing to awaken them: they were as good as dead. He called:
"Gamahiro!! Let's move! We must heal Tsunade somehow!"
The green giant toad extended his tongue to him, and as he carried Tsunade carefully, he jumped over Gamahiro's head and asked him to jump away. The hypnotized Shizune and Sakura cried as they walked, again under the influence of the Kaleidoscope Eyes.
Naruto was crying sour tears as he crumbled down to his knees, and both his parents got close to him. Minato spoke first:
"Naruto, please, try to understand our predicament as we're trying to understand yours..."
Kushina replied:
"If I were alive and well, I could kick those bastards' asses repeatedly until they had no butts left!!"
Naruto smirked at the thought and at his mother's rebellious thought, yet Minato continued:
"We were on a really terrible situation. Your mother here, Kushina Uzumaki, was bearing the Nine-Tails inside her before you were born, and her seal weakened when she gave birth to you. A masked Uchiha bastard took control of her as she gave birth and unleashed her seal, also dividing the Tailed Beast's energy and unleashing the Yang one over the village in order to kill everyone. We did what we could before we died, and we tried to make of you a hero..."
Minato cried a single tear as Kushina replied:
"...yet we had to learn from you that we ended up making of you a monster, at least to the eyes of the villagers..." Kushina kneeled down and threw her arms and face to the ground: "Please, my son, forgive us..."
Minato kneeled and bowed as well, and Naruto saw their honest pain as they sobbed. He couldn't find it in his heart to keep complaining at them and hugged them, clinging to them as if there was no tomorrow. The surprised parents were happy in the end, as Naruto could learn his true legacy in the end. Minato asked:
"And, how are you doing now, my son? How does the Leaf treat you?"
Naruto replied:
"I'm not a Leaf ninja anymore; the Pervy Sage took me to the Hidden Whirlpool Village, and now they asked me to ask you for something."
Kushina cried still:
"My sister, my father, have you met them?" Naruto nodded with a smile: "Great. Now, what did they want you to ask us?"
"Basically, where is the Fox's Yin energy, so they can seal it inside me as well."
Both nodded, knowing that this might be their last thing to do for Naruto. Minato said, looking at the Fox:
"Lord Kurama, how would you like to be in full control over yourself again?"
The Nine-Tailed Fox, named Kurama, simply replied:
"You condemn me to prison, you seal me inside a jackass boy, and now, after seventeen years of both making me and him suffer, you claim to want to help me? You think too much of yourself, Fourth Hokage!"
Kushina was a bit more harsh:
"Do you want your Yin energy back or not?"
Kurama growled and nodded, and Minato said:
"We shall use our last energy left to attract Kurama's Yin energy back to you, my son; perhaps this time lord Kurama might not be so harsh with you and stump your growth."
Kushina nodded and said:
"Please, tell my sister and my father that I love them a lot, brat. After this, you won't see us again, so you might consider this our last gift to you."
Naruto saw them for the last time and said:
"I... I finally know who you are... and I... I love you... dad, mom..."
Minato smiled and said:
"Never forget who you are, Naruto..."
Kushina replied with a grin:
"Kick everyone's asses out there and give them one for me!"
Naruto nodded at them:
"I'll do that... goodbye, and thanks..."
End of Episode 11