Date written: 22/10/10 – 07/12/10
Posted on FanFiction: 12/12/10
A/N: More character development, super action scenes you'd expect from low-budget films, and a big surprise at the chapter's finale. Quite a touch, even if it did take me more than a month to write it all up.
This chapter ends the tyranny plagued by the Kyuubi's "second coming." It's an abrupt end, but I'll be working on the denouement in the next chapter. This one is already quite long for me. After that—and the resolution of my surprise—there'll be a few time skips here and there. While I like talking about Aka-Naruto and his childhood, setting up the world will stagnate if I concentrate on just him. The world has to move on, that and I'm starting to find it boring. I'm close to making another Da Vinci (he was known to procrastinate a lot) as it is. So a change in scenery will do me and the story a whole amount of good.
I seriously want to get started on writing Naruto's first crush. Oh, the humanity!
–– CHAPTER 8 ––
Yellow And Red Make Orange . . . Right?
Relaxed in stance but alert in mind, fragile in appearance but strong in will, the once proud multi-tailed demon fox rested behind those large, thick wrought iron bars with its stronger and younger counterpart, not doing the least bit of help in getting them out of their prison. Naruto was certain that if it had been two giant foxes battering the prison door instead of one, things would've gone FUBAR way sooner. As it was, they were leaning on the edge of that worst case scenario, but not close enough to warrant warning bells just yet. Still, Naruto felt that warning bells should be ringed now once his eyes had set on that second fox. The fox from his reality.
Shocked as he was, Naruto approached the bars of the prison without as much as a cautious glance towards the other occupant, which was silently seething on the other side, glaring at him and his father, shutting up its roars and growls after Minato plastered that seal on top of the original one. Naruto kept his eye on the now seven-tailed demon fox. There was just something about this picture that got his mind reeling after a big shock. And what a big shock this was, indeed.
But what shocked him the most about this was the pained expression on the old furball, and old seemed to be quite appropriate because with all those gray strands scattered along the once reddish orange coat accompanied by the squinted eyes and low growls for every shallow breath in, the Nanabi no Youko looked the part of an aged fox nearing the end of its lifespan.
"Seven?" Naruto inquired, eyes never leaving the pitiful fox. Funny, that; he never thought he'd see the day to actually show pity to the fox. He vaguely remembered going on a drinking session with some of the guys and saying to them that he'd be dead before he showed any kind of sympathy towards the burden in his belly. When you went to a drinking session with some of the guys, expect to lose all your inhibitions when such words that are in your thoughts are supposed to stay there . . . and also expect to have your pants missing, have a splitting headache on top of a roof in the market district, and have a bottle of half-finished liquor in your hand while your shirt reeked of a woman's sexual odor. A night to remember . . . if not for the blackout anyway.
"Yeah," Minato said. "The other two tails are not in the mindscape."
"But how is that even possible?" Naruto slid a hand through his golden locks, ending it with rubbing his nape. Something didn't add up at all. "Tails don't just disappear . . . do they?"
"No," Minato answered, "they don't, although there have been theories that the amount of tails on a demon signifies their power level. More tails means stronger demon."
Naruto looked at him over his shoulder. "That's just bullshit."
He nodded. "I know. How they came up with that idea, nobody really knows."
"Yeah. The Eight-tailed Octopus-dude could beat my ass blindfolded if he wanted to. But it doesn't explain how there are two missing tails from my world's Kyuubi."
"I have a theory," Minato admitted, "but with little information to refer to about transdimensional travelling, I don't think it'll hold much ground."
Having a small clue as to what he meant by trans-something-something, Naruto replied, "Better than nothing."
"All right." He crossed his arms and moved away from the cage. "Do you remember the technique you used to get here?"
"Yeah. It was specifically designed to destroy the Juubi by sacrificing the Rikudou Sennin."
"It was designed for the Juubi, not the Kyuubi. And I can still remember the instructions written on that old scroll when you read it." When he was asked how he came to know the contents of the scroll, Minato replied, "I looked into your memories. Using that jutsu was probably not a good idea."
"Gee, ya think," Naruto said sarcastically.
"But you didn't have much of a choice. It was a lose-lose situation, but you still chose the lesser of the two evils."
"I still think Kishimoto ripped off that idea from The Matrix," Rambo commented, his disembodied voice echoing through the room. "I mean, world illusion? A world created through sheer control over the minds of every human being on the planet? And don't Naruto and Neo have the same first and last letters?"
"Uh, what is he talking about?" Minato inquired.
"He gets like this sometimes. Keeps spouting on about names and places and things I don't understand half of the time. He's the personification of my insanity and conspiracy paranoia. I just know it."
"Does he do that often?"
"Not always. I told him to keep those conspiracies of his to a minimum when I'm around. Otherwise he'll be vomiting the rug again."
Minato ignored the burning curiosity in him to ask what his son meant by that.
"Going back to the matter at hand: So I chose to whack myself out of the board," Naruto said. "What does that have to do with what we're discussing?"
"It means everything, Naruto, because that's where it all started." He gestured to the cage. "How else do you think the Kyuubi from your world got here? Simply put, the suicide jutsu was incomplete from the very start because you hosted the Kyuubi not the Juubi. Tell me, would an Academy student be able to use an A-class jutsu?"
"No."
"Then what would happen if he tried to?"
"The jutsu would fail and he'd probably end up with chakra exhaustion."
"Now take that concept to yourself and the suicide jutsu. At the time, did you pass the requirements for it?"
Naruto thought back on the instructions he had read on the old scroll written by the Rikudou Sennin. The scroll contained all that he needed to know about the jutsu. Its earlier utilized handseals, the failed experiments (which almost did the legendary sage in), and the finalization. The instructions were clear, specific, and easy to learn. But there was one section near the bottom of the scroll that told of the sage teaching this technique to his subordinates, only to backfire when every single one who had used this technique were given a most painful death that no one could imagine when they had been captured by an enemy group. The captors were loose-lipped in telling the tales of the unearthly screams of their prisoners when they were given the chance in using the jutsu, their bodies mutilated by some unseen force. The strangest thing was that there was no bloodshed, as if the blood inside their bodies had disappeared along with the dismembered limbs.
"No," Naruto answered, "I didn't. And because of that . . . something else entirely happened?"
"If it were a normal human, then they might've died in the most painful way. You're different."
He rubbed his stomach. "Was different, you mean. That furball isn't in my gut anymore."
"Yes, and there's nothing we can do to change that. You no longer have a physical body, so resealing it in you is a no go."
"So like you said before, you need help in grafting a more powerful seal. But what could be stronger than the Eight Trigrams?"
"My counterpart in your reality either did not know this or believed that the modifications I have in mind are impossible."
"How impossible?"
"Impossible enough that it's downright insane."
Naruto only took a second to think this over. "Let's do it."
His father looked at him as if he just admitted he liked watching scat flicks.
He just shrugged and added, "Do we even have a choice?"
"I suppose you're right. I was just expecting you to be more cautious about this."
"I've taken a lot worse. Besides, I've already labeled myself insane." Naruto didn't see the Catch-22 paradox in that statement. "So what do we have to do?"
"The first part would be to remove the Eight Trigrams completely. It'd tamper with the new seal if there were any remnants. Secondly, I need you to suppress the two demon foxes long enough for me to finish writing down the necessary seals. They have to be written after the Eight Trigrams is removed; they might end up corrupt otherwise."
Naruto looked inside the cage. "I don't know. I could probably take on the Nanabi, but it doesn't look so good." And it hasn't said a thing since we saw it. I'm sure the furball saw us.
"Then it's for the better." The mindscape shook. The Kyuubi ceased its idling in the corner and resumed bashing the cage door.
"IF YOU WANT A FIGHT, THEN COME AT ME, HUMAN! I PROMISE TO MAKE IT QUICK."
The other demon fox, the sickly one, wasn't fazed or made any attempt to help its counterpart.
"Do you know what happened to my reality's furball?" he asked Minato, ignoring the growls and death threats coming from the livelier canid.
"A delayed transportation is my best guess, Naruto."
"Delayed? How?"
"I don't know how. It just happened. It lay dormant behind that prison for days before enough of its energy from your reality came here and materialized it somewhat. As it is now, there're still two more tails still en route to here."
It made as much sense as Naruto could process for the moment, but something clicked in his head that granted him clarity to one question he had been seeking for answers. "And they're close, aren't they?" he asked. "If they weren't, then the seal wouldn't be reacting as if there were eight tails out instead of six."
"With the seal already partially destroyed, some of the programs have become corrupt and some have been deleted. Your modifications might have something to do with the former, by the way."
"Great, just great," Naruto murmured. He then looked up. "Rambo! How's the kid?"
"Can't get him to wake up at all. After your departure from the white room, he just turned . . . catatonic or something."
"How long do you think we have before the Kyuubi's fully released?" he asked Minato.
"Well, if the bridge to the mainframe is still relatively intact then we still have twenty minutes to spare," the Yellow Flash answered.
"And . . . if it's not intact?" Naruto's stomach just lurched. It seemed to say Naruto wouldn't like the reply.
"With the time we've wasted talking? Four."
". . . we're fucked."
Inoichi Yamanaka could very well describe the emotion reverberating inside him when his eyes settled onto the streets below the rooftop on which he stood. Alone as he was while the rest of his team from the T&I department joined up with the other Konoha shinobi to contain the threat—despite its seeming futility—the sight he lay witness to was more effective than if he were with his team when he stumbled on this particular street. Whenever he went to work, he would put on the mask of indifference, as his predecessors had done, and shape up the new recruits. He was the Torture and Interrogation Department's best mind-reader, but he was also their most efficient 'drill instructor.' He was a tyrant among the greenhorns when it was time for his lessons, but he expected amazing results from his pupils and they delivered them smoothly. But no matter how many years of such mind-breaking work, he never once smiled or laughed whenever there was a time when laughter seemed the best way to relieve the stress and ease the mind before it overloads and enters meltdown. This was due to his mask. He laughed inside, he smiled inside, he took pride in his students' progresses inside. And sometimes he took pity on his victims inside. His stoicism was notorious inside the T&I department that a rumor about his attitude started after his wife's tragic death circulated throughout the ranks. He hadn't bothered abolishing it because, like the way his old teammate thought of fruitless actions, it would be too troublesome. If his T&I team had been here to witness this scene with him, he would've been able to sustain the mask of indifference long enough for him to calm his senses and to proceed with SOP in machine-like efficiency.
But he was alone and the mask was then shattered.
It was not the sight of civilians lying on the dirt, most unconscious, some awake but irresponsive to outside stimuli. It was not the sight of the six ominous tails protruding from the sector of buildings—three tails short of FUBAR. It was not even the sudden increase of dread and the potent malevolence of demonic chakra percolating the area. With such raw power so intense, he could almost feel his brain trying to override the fight-or-flight response so that he could trust more of his instincts and get the fuck out of there, quick. But he didn't, because he needed to stay. That was his drive, that need. To fight came in second.
But what really destroyed his stoic face was seeing Kushina Uzumaki fiddling with a kunai in her right hand as she moved the sharp blade closer to her left wrist.
"No!" Inoichi leaped off the roof, rolled sideways as his feet touched the ground, and used the rolling momentum to kick start his dash towards the suicidal redhead. He was able to reach her and then whisk the kunai off her before the blade could make contact with her pale skin. "Uzumaki-san, no!" He grabbed her by the shoulders, crouching down so that they were eye-to-eye.
"Let me go!" she shouted, trying to wrench his hold of her.
Inoichi had to counter the grapple before she did harm to him. Her subsequent attempts were instinctually driven than the cold precision done by shinobi of her caliber. He had to stop her, so, left with no choice but to retaliate in kind, he subdued her with relative ease. They were soon eye-to-eye once more. Those glazy gray orbs showed such depression and grief that Inoichi could almost understand her for trying to slit her wrists. 'Almost understand,' however, did not mean he would let her do it.
"I'm just so tired," she murmured, tears glistening at the corner of her eyes. "I want to see them again. I don't want to be alone. Not again."
He wasn't sure whether it was because of her grief that she wrapped her arms around him or it was because of how desperate she sounded that she cried onto his chest, but his arms moved on their own and enveloped Kushina's shivering body as the sobs continued to pour out of her. Emotions were usually under his control and it took more than just simple grief-stricken women needing a crying shoulder to induce at least some semblance of a change in his facial expression. But when it came to Kushina Uzumaki, things were different. He was different. There was never a time before this that he saw such a carefree and happy-looking woman be cut down into a pitifully wretched state, and it was because of this in mind (and in feeling, though he wasn't aware of this part yet) that he didn't bother putting back the mask. He somehow understood that to face this problem, he had to be in touch with something he showed no one but his family: his emotions.
He didn't know how long he had knelt on that street with the roars of the Kyuubi raging just beyond the buildings that block his field of vision. The battle still continued and there was a small part in his mind and heart that it wasn't going to stop anytime soon. The worst part, it seemed, had yet to come.
As he rubbed the redhead's back, his eyes wandered over to the street again, where he caught sight of something that made his blood boil. It was Mizuki, sitting upright, trying to nurse a bleeding left shoulder. How could he have not noticed him at all?
Shifting Kushina's position so that Inoichi was in front of her, he quickly fished out a kunai as he closed in on Mizuki. With her crying shoulder gone, Kushina sat on her buttocks with her knees wrapped around her arms and her head looking down. Despite his misgivings of leaving the woman alone, lest she decided to continue what he had halted, he needed to make sure that Mizuki was subdued. Although the white-haired chuunin hadn't made any sudden movements other than wincing from the stab wound Inoichi could see, it didn't seem like he wanted to get away or even do harm. Mizuki just kept rocking back and forth while one hand clutched his left shoulder and the other clutched his right bicep, his arms forming a deformed cross. The colors of his eyes looked glazed, vacant.
He had seen eyes like those before. Five years ago, amongst villagers whose minds could not handle the strain brought on by the chakra of the demon fox. If left untreated, the affected party would become nothing more than a human vegetable. Inoichi had been one of the many mind-walkers who were assigned to these unfortunate souls, so he knew the look in their eyes well. And he had always believed that the shinobi who had their minds healed (Mizuki included) during the aftermath of the Kyuubi attack had their sanity dangling on a chasm; all it needed was a push in the right direction, and they would forever be lost. Some had better resistances than others, but Mizuki's was already gone and his mentality had already fallen off the edge.
Was it wrong to pity such a sight? Was his attempted murder on Naruto a symptom of his degrading mentality?
Mizuki could be insane. It was a hypothesis, and would do little to keep the bastard alive. It would be so easy, just finish what Kushina started (he was sure that the wound on Mizuki's shoulder was because of Kushina; a change of heart on the last second, he supposed), slit the man's throat and make the official death as suicide. No one would defend the bastard. No one would know.
Inoichi pondered over this before he knocked Mizuki out with a blow to the head from his kunai's pummel. It may leave a bitter taste. It may give him regret in the future. And it may irk him that he was throwing away a golden opportunity in disposing a threat without the need of courtroom procedures and jury decisions. But he knew that this path should be followed.
"Because it's the right thing to do," he said to himself.
Moments later, a team of chuunin had come to carry the unconscious civilians away from the Kyuubi's wanton carnage. And Inoichi let them take Kushina and Mizuki without protest. He was still needed in the battlefield. His team, his village, still needed him.
Adrenaline pumped, muscles tensed, eyes narrowed, Hiruzen Sarutobi looked out into the market district where the heaviest damages were being done by the beast that almost decimated Konoha five years ago. On both of his flanks there were his advisors and former teammates, Koharu Utatane and Homura Mitokado. They were all garbed in their battle outfits, armed to the teeth with weaponry and techniques to help the rallying forces of Konoha to secure the perimeter before the demon fox could move elsewhere and continue its destruction of the village. Hiruzen wanted to go into the frontlines and take this fight directly to the demon, just like what his successor had done, but his advisors urged him not to. It wasn't just the risk of losing a village leader while Konoha was in danger; it was also for the village morale. The death of a leader would be like beheading a snake. Remove the head and the body will soon follow.
But what choice did they have, really, if he was one of a handful of people who had the power to actually suppress the Kyuubi and send it crawling back into the seal from whence it had been released from? Hiruzen knew that Jiraiya was already forming a makeshift team in the west to enter the battlefield while Tsunade was simultaneously doing her best to help the evacuation and tend to the wounded. The Konoha police were helping the frontline shinobi, but their forces were dwindling. For every minute that passed, two of their men were either dead or incapacitated.
The six tails jutting out from Konoha's high-rise buildings felt like a bad omen.
So far there were only sightings of the beast's tails swinging and swaying all around, destroying towers, swiping ninjas off their feet, and carrying torrential gales that packed plenty of debris for lethal projectile attacks. The head and body was nowhere to be seen as far as the reports went, but with Hiruzen far back from the devastation and with his forces concentrating more on acting than thinking (they leave that to strategists and leaders when a tailed beast is in the equation), he couldn't be certain if this sudden appearance was due to the beast's release or something else.
No matter how much he tried to remove from his mind the irrelevant topic, it just kept pushing through his defenses, as if it were meant to be there and meant to show a message to him. But this message seemed to be in code, because Hiruzen hadn't a clue as to what it wanted to say. All he understood was that this incident somehow involved the anomaly Inoichi Yamanaka had found within Naruto Uzumaki's mind, an anomaly so strange and unfathomable that it greatly shook Inoichi when he saw it for himself.
And there was no telling the involvements of the so called 'Guardian angel brought by the Shinigami.' Right now, though, his village was in danger and he was running out of ideas on what course of action he could order his troops to do.
"Hiruzen," Koharu called, "Team Lima just reported back. They found Kushina Uzumaki."
"Kushina?" It brought his attention away from the main conflict, and he stared down at his teammate's eyes. "Where?"
"They've brought her back here without incident," she replied. "From what I've heard from the idle talks of the other team members, they say she seemed . . . catatonic, I suppose."
"She was exposed to the malevolent chakra for too long," Homura said as he joined the two's conversation. "I don't think she'd be of any help at all."
"If ever," Koharu added. "Mental traumas can be worse than physical ones."
"I'll have a talk with her," Hiruzen said.
"No, you won't," Koharu rebuked. "We still have a fight to end, Hiruzen. The village and its ninjas need you to concentrate on the bigger picture."
"For me to understand the bigger picture, I need to understand what caused all this."
A new voice entered the conversation. "Understand the root of the problem, I take it?"
Hiruzen looked to his left. "Danzou." He gave a nod when the crippled man bowed in respect. "Weren't you supposed to mobilize your troops?"
"I had," Danzou answered smoothly. "And then I thought you'd need some help thinking up a plan. My men are self-sufficient and can handle themselves well, be it in a team or independently. I'm just their teacher and guide."
Hiruzen said to Koharu, "Where's Kushina?"
"Hiruzen—"
"She's inside the adjacent building," Homura interjected, "first floor, the last door in the left corridor."
"Homura!" Koharu said.
"Hiruzen is the Hokage, Koharu, and we're his advisors. We don't order him around."
Hiruzen didn't stay to see what Koharu's reaction would be; he had already jumped off the rooftop from where they conversed and entered the specified building. He took a left and walked through the corridor with its doors all wide open. Inside them were makeshift cots for Tsunade's patients, most of their injuries relatively minor compared to the amount of blood shed when the Kyuubi first attacked this village. Whoever was able gave enough respect to their leader by bowing as he passed them; those who weren't offered him the Leaf salute (right fist knocking the left chest once). He didn't see Tsunade anywhere, although he had an idea of where she currently was.
Reaching the end of the long corridor, he panned his head to the left where the designated door stood, its brown varnished wood standing out on the corridor's light blue wallpaper. He went in front of the door, knocked twice before entering the room.
In that moment, everybody in Konoha felt the rampage of the Kyuubi's malevolent chakra. Eight tails were now out.
"Ready?"
"As I'll ever be." He formed the cross handseal and shouted, "Kage Bunshin no jutsu!"
"You know what you need to do?"
"Yes," he answered exasperatedly. "We've already been through this, Dad. Let's just hope it works."
"All right, on three." Minato breathed deeply. "One."
"Two," Naruto replied, right hand clutching a kunai, his clones doing the same.
"Three!"
And they were off.
Minato leaped towards the very center of the gate while his son ordered his clones to move into strategic points in the vast room, hoping to at least subdue the Kyuubi instead of merely fighting it to keep from getting out. The seals he had to graft were meticulously time-consuming, but he and Naruto were confident that the modifications the Yellow Flash had thought out and the changes Naruto had inputted were the best they could offer to prevent the beast from escaping. A new seal created from the efforts of two fuinjutsu specialists, father and son.
Minato pulled the old seal out of the gate and jumped off moments before the Kyuubi rammed the gate out of its hinges. Naruto and his clones soon entered the fray as they tried to overwhelm the beast with numbers, but like the first time he had fought the fox, having numbers was nothing more than a nuisance for it. Its giant tails swung left and right, its body dodging specifically placed Rasengan attacks which were meant to cripple the limbs. Naruto's clones were at the receiving end of a high body count attack, and their numbers dwindled in seconds that Naruto had to summon another batch of shadow clones to not only replace but also increase the initial amount of clones. He wasn't the least bit worried about overcrowding the room.
During their fight, the Yellow Flash was halfway finished in implementing the new seal into the mindscape, but he couldn't very well use it until the Kyuubi was pushed back into its prison with the gates firmly closed. And what was meant by 'implementing' and 'into the mindscape' was that he was drawing the new seal into his palm, and due to the urgent need for precision and a steady hand, he shouldn't be interrupted, otherwise the drawn seal would be ruined and he would have to redraw everything. After getting nearly hit by one of the Kyuubi's random tail swipes which shook him out of his deep concentration, Minato decided to move back a little more and redo from scratch. He prayed that Naruto could hold off a little longer.
Naruto, on the other hand, prayed that his father would finish drawing the seal before the Kyuubi had the chance to get the upper hand. This fight was draining him, not only in chakra but also in mind. He found it harder to concentrate, found it difficult to summon more chakra to fuel his trademark jutsu. And they just kept getting harder and harder as the fight dragged on. Now Naruto had always depended on his limitless stamina and chakra reserves to get him out of sticky situations, but something was quite odd today. He was experiencing exhaustion too early into the fight, as if the many years of him battling foes to his very limit and rising back up to challenge the next one were nothing more than lucid dreams.
He charged straight at the beast, a battle cry bursting from his lips, a giant Rasengan on his hand. His clones had followed his new tactic and mimicked their creator's actions. An assault of over a hundred Rasengan would have probably be overkill for some of Naruto's past opponents, but the Kyuubi was a demon fox, and foxes were known to be sly and deceitful. Naruto had unknowingly fallen into a trap of false security.
As if it had been rehearsed hundreds of times, the fox easily dodged and blocked every one of the Rasengan that was hurled towards it. And with a body that towered the blond fifty times over, what the fox had done was no easy feat. The fox also gave Naruto another subsequent surprise when its body was suddenly enveloped in a chakra cloak covered with dozens upon dozens of flame-like tentacles, their numbers multiplying and dividing like branches from a tree. And like a frog sticking out its tongue to grab its meal, the tentacles grabbed onto the closest clones and sucked them into the cloak. They did not poof from existence as Naruto expected, but disintegrated slowly, as if the inside of the cloak was fatally acidic.
The original Naruto and the surviving number of his clones avoided the tentacles as much as they could, with the original deeming a retreat was in order.
"BOSS!"
His clone's warning came too late as one of the tentacles slithered just behind the original and shoved him towards the Kyuubi. When his body shot into the cloak, it felt like splashing into a pool of mercury after a ten-foot drop. The pressure inside confined his movements. It hurt. His skin was tearing up on its own. He had shut his eyes the moment he felt contact with the cloak, and he kept them shut, lest he be introduced to the pain of getting his eyes seared and cauterized. His mouth opened up reflexively to let out a scream, the pain too great for his self-control to sustain, but instead it let in the acidic substance of the cloak. And the pain just worsened, intensified threefold. With his concentration destroyed by the onslaught of pain spreading at every nook and cranny of his body, inside and out, the remaining clones vanished, leaving only smoke trails of their limited existence.
The Kyuubi chuckled. "I got you," it stated mockingly. While Naruto had thought that the Kyuubi would leave him inside this cloak to disintegrate like the clones it had captured before him, it didn't come to that. The fox had a different plan in mind, it seemed; instead of having to await oblivion, knowing that he had failed not only his father but also his five-year-old counterpart, the Kyuubi left him inside its poisonous cloak long enough to exhaust most of his energy, grabbed him with one of his tails, and then threw him into the opened gates where the other Kyuubi (still two tails short) lay.
Naruto tried to get up, but pain still engulfed his very being, and he crashed back onto the watery ground. He at least shifted his body face-up so that he wouldn't drown, but it was tasking enough for him that he was seeing black spots in his vision. And there he laid, heart racing, lungs demanding more air, muscles in his limbs twitching every now and then as though they were reliving his suffering before. It hurt to move, hurt to even breathe. He knew he had died before, but it never felt like this.
I guess the furball was too strong, he thought. His eyes wandered on the sickly Nanabi, on the shadows flooding the walls and ceiling of the prison room, on the menacing presence of the Kyuubi closing in on his father, who was still in the middle of drawing the seals into his palm. Not enough time. Damn it.
He wanted to get back into the fight. His will was indestructible, but if only the same could be said for his body. There were times that the latter could not catch up with the former. His will was endless; his body had limits. The gap was just too big for Naruto to do anything about, despite his presence inside the mindscape and his powers as a secondary god within it, because while inside the room where the Kyuubi and the prison resided, the limitless powers at his disposal were temporarily null.
But even when his body lay broken, he tried to get up. Pain was a constant companion for shinobi, be it in training or in war; pain was always the same. It showed progress, it showed sorrow, it showed the face of one's limit. But most of all, it showed that one was still alive.
He was able to get to his knees before something large landed onto his back. It wasn't heavy, but with Naruto's relatively weakened body, it and gravity pushed him back into the shallow water. Spitting out some of the liquid that got into his mouth, he looked over his shoulder and his cheek made contact with prickly orange-and-white stripes of fur.
His blood turned cold.
"Don't think . . ." the old fox growled, "that just because . . . I'm weak means . . . I'm harmless. Far from it, human.
"But," it took a deep breath through its nose, the suction creating mild ripples on the water, "it was good of you . . . to think so. That imbecilic youngster would've . . . seen through my act, otherwise."
Naruto cared more about helping his father than listening to the Nanabi's lengthy monologue. He tried getting up again.
"If you want to save everyone," the fox said, "you have to let me go."
Feeling indignant, Naruto replied, "Why should I? You're not exactly the poster boy for helping people in need."
"I'm not asking for freedom, human. I'm asking you . . ." Another deep breath. "To let me go."
His Kyuubi would've taken his words as an insult and gone on with its usual tirade of death threats, killings, and mad growls. But a situation never got serious enough for the proud fox to let the jibe slide and keep the conversation going. It left Naruto bewildered, but also less doubtful. And the bewilderment was essentially fuelled by the fox's declaration.
He showed more of his annoyance with this reply: "Is this one of those scenes where someone says something unexpected and easily taken the wrong way, and then elaborates it in length? Coz if it is, I don't have time for that shit."
"I won't go at length . . . no strength for it."
Minato had to halt his drawing to dodge the younger Kyuubi's swipe. It then morphed into a battle reminiscent of the time five years ago, minus the giant frog and the Flying Thunder God technique. The blond was dodging and counteracting through sheer speed and strength alone.
I can't believe I'm saying this, Naruto thought. "I'm listening."
The old fox gave a ghost of a smile—more of a grimace since it still looked to be in pain. "I'm stuck between the two realities."
"Tried to cling to me, hoping I'd stay alive somehow?" Naruto inquired without thinking.
"Your jutsu altered the seal . . . and bound me to you. I had . . . no choice, moron. If it is any consolation . . . I was prepared to die before this occurred."
"But if you're bound to me, where were you when I first woke here?"
"A trick question. I don't know it as well. I'm not one to . . . think over things thoroughly. What happens, happens."
"Then how do we unbind you?" Then something clicked in Naruto's head. "Wait, what's going to happen to you if—and that's a big if—you were unbound?"
"It's different than release. As I said, I'm stuck between two realities . . . I can feel my two tails nearing this reality, and if that . . . were to happen, that youngster over there will absorb me."
"What?"
"I'm an embodiment of chakra, human." Deep breath. "Simple as that."
The younger Kyuubi readied its main blast attack, its tails remaining stationery to charge the chakra sphere forming in front of the fox's open mouth. Minato, knowing the intensity of that ball's destructive power, commenced an evasive maneuver. The Kyuubi attacked; the mindscape shook in its foundations.
"It will also . . . repair the damages on you," the Nanabi continued.
"What damages?"
"You've realized it, haven't you? Not only was my counterpart stronger than me, you also found yourself . . . feeling a lot weaker than before. And not just physically."
Shaken up that the old fox found out what he had been trying to hide, Naruto could only respond with a nod.
"It is because of the bond. If that youngster is absorbing me little by little . . ."
"Then that'd mean the bastard is absorbing a part of me, too," he finished. "Fuck. But how?"
"This seal is weaker than mine was. You understand now?"
"Yeah. What do I need to do?"
"Nothing. I only needed your agreement. I'll handle the rest."
The two beings, human and beast, stared at each other's eyes, a level of distrust and detestation still lingering between them. They may never fully understand one another, but they had a common goal and that was to see this mental to its end. Unfortunately, one of them had to be erased, removed from this reality.
Even though the fox was weak, it still had its conniving mind. It thought of tricking the human, saving itself from the damnation this plan would inevitably follow. It would be easy for the fox to do so. But somehow the fox just couldn't bring itself to, though it wasn't because of something as fake as human emotion (nothing more than words to describe something humans couldn't fully comprehend). It was probably more out of respect than anything else. He had to be given credit where it was due; Naruto had beaten the odds time and time again, and even when he should've been in his lowest moments, his will never cracked, never wavered. While he was still strong and able, the fox grew weak and handicapped. Whether wrath and envy coursed through its system as its tail wrapped around the blond or not was irrelevant; time was not on their side and the plan had to commence immediately.
The fox was never a being of words, but in this situation, it seemed appropriate. "Kick his ass for me."
The way the blond expressed utter bewilderment, which morphed into reluctant agreement, was almost priceless.
The plan commenced and with just a simple alteration on Naruto's soul, the bond between the former host and the former tailed beast was severed.
With a final flash of red energy breaching out of the prison, the Kyuubi of Naruto's old world now ceased to exist.
Outside, a red beam of energy shot through the sky. Nobody knew how long the beam stayed before dissipating, but the impact it laid onto the ninja world was there to stay. It was seen in all the neighboring countries, all the ninja villages, and all thought that it was a red pillar ascending to the throne of the gods.
Minato did his best to keep himself out of harm's way, but the Kyuubi seemed to have more dominance over this room than in any other. He had just gotten access to the other sections of the mindscape recently, but that short amount of time was enough for him to gauge the 'atmospheric' differences between sections. This room kept the Kyuubi for over five years, and it should be no surprise that the fox had labeled this place as its own den. The ambience, color, and environment of the room were dead giveaways.
He was literally fighting an enemy in its home base. And that was a BIG disadvantage.
But he wasn't called the Yellow Flash for nothing. He did what he could to distract the fox so that he could afford time to settle down the nerves in his adrenaline-induced hands and finish the seal he was drawing on his palm. When he found that he didn't have time, then he was obliged to make time. The longer this fight went on, the smaller the chances of repairing the seal and saving his only son's life. And Kushina . . .
He didn't want to cross to the other side knowing that he let his wife down. He caused plenty of grief onto her when he decided to sacrifice his life and seal the Kyuubi in their newborn son. Naruto's memories showed a lot of Kushina and her influence in his short life, but Minato was able to see something the innocent Naruto didn't. Kushina still had emotional wounds left over, but as the years passed it gradually healed. He mentally calculated that if life had gone smoothly until Naruto turned ten, she would've already moved on and accepted the gap he had left in her heart. But life didn't go smoothly, if Naruto's brushes with death were any indication. If their son were to die today . . . he dreaded to believe the possibility, but he knew his wife and he knew that she valued family more than any other. She had lost one family to war, created a new one with him, and had been left to pick up the pieces when it broke apart. She survived a plethora of losses up to this day, but having her son die would be the final straw. There would be no meaning in her life anymore.
He dodged another swipe from the fox's tails and widened the distance between them. What he didn't count on, however, was that the fox intended for this to happen, and it slowly began to charge some kind of projectile attack. A giant ball of chakra manifested itself in front of the fox's wide open mouth, demonic red and human blue intermingling but not creating a new mixed color. Minato had seen this attack before, in the older Naruto's memories during his one and only battle with the Kyuubi in the mindscape. The only method to escape such an attack would be finding cover and hope that it was enough to elude disintegration.
But before he could move away from the fox's firing range, a blinding flash of red light burst from beyond the gates of the prison, channeling fragments of demonic energy into the general area. While Minato feared that this burst was a sign that the other Kyuubi grew tired of dawdling and decided to join in on the action, the energy also amplified the already large-as-hell sphere of impending destruction. If foxes could grin while their mouths were open . . .
A small figure shot out from the darkness of the prison and collided with the Kyuubi's unprotected spine. This blind attack affected the fox's concentration on the charging chakra ball, which did not explode, as Minato thought, but dissipated its energy to its surroundings, like the scattering of shards from a shattered mirror. Minato released a nervous breath, more than glad that the danger had been dealt with before it reached critical.
The fox howled in pain and then turned around, its growling face expressing its unwillingness to accept that it was inflicted physical damage inside its domain. But the events proved to be true, and the fox could deny all it wanted, but that wouldn't defeat the new opponent in the fight. The fox tried to retaliate with a swipe of its tails. The emphasis of the sentence was tried, because the newcomer multiplied himself and ordered his clones to subdue the beast with swift efficiency.
If Minato had blinked, he might have missed it. Fortunately he didn't, but he was reeling from disbelief at the sudden change of the battle's advantageous side. The fox's tails, all nine of them, had been nailed more or less to the ground at the bottom of the shallow water by many strong arms and chakra-laced feet. He was still processing the development when Naruto shouted for him to finish the seal.
"I can't keep this up forever!"
Minato was curious as to where Naruto had come to attain such power, but the reddish aura engulfing his form in a subtle manner seemed to be the only hint he needed to produce a valid answer to his open question. As it was, he returned to the seal on his palm and meticulously completed the seal.
"Get away!"
He complied with the order right when the Kyuubi roared out its anger and indignation, throwing the army of Naruto clones left and right. Thrice he had to dodge them before the beast fixated its attention on the original troublemaker. Every one of the clones vanished, both those who were thrown but hadn't been destroyed and those who were still clinging to the fox like ticks. Naruto stood erect in front of the fox, whisker marks more prominent than before, as if they were newly formed scars, his eyes glowing red, the sclera around them coming across as an ominous yellow, though Minato could fault that to the ambient colors of the place.
"It's just you and me," Naruto said. "Let's finish this." He looked directly at Minato when he said that last one, and Minato quickly asserted the hidden message. The next phase of their plan was under way. What the blonds needed was an opportunity to move and exploit a weakness in the fox's defenses. That earlier surprise attack had been a stroke of luck; neither of them was about to chance their final attack with just that in their hands.
The fox, impatient as it was, made the first move and surprised both blonds when it spun 180 and rushed towards the Yellow Flash. This was without its own bit of advantage, as Naruto demonstrated when he had a clear view of the fox's unprotected back once again. With the power he currently had in his disposal, he channeled every ounce of it into his right hand, halting the flow of everything leaving and entering beyond the wrist. He lost all feeling to the hand as the aura around it expanded and darkened. He was aware of what his body manipulations would entail (he had an earful when Tsunade got wind of it), but essentially he was dead and, more or less, a soul stuck inside a mindscape, so the laws of physical reality didn't work the same way here. At least he hoped so.
He moved quick, forcing his legs to push him up as far as they could, and landed on the fox's back. He was about to condense the bottled up energy into something more practical and damaging, but he was blinded by an onslaught of three, maybe four, tails crushing him from every which way. It sounded comical, but Naruto could attest to the pain that came along with it. Fortunately he saved the energy from releasing by staying conscious and keeping up with the needed concentration. He got out of there before the tails could introduce an encore performance.
Propelling himself towards the ceiling, he used normal chakra to stick to it and then ran in a random direction. The fox was not about to let him go when he was close to being beaten, so it willed for its tails to lengthen, transferring large amounts of demonic energy to the tips before launching them to the ceiling like haymakers equipped with brass knuckles. Naruto made use of his training and experience in the war to dodge the tails as they pierced through the ceiling, shattering bricks and mortar, dispersing smoke in their wake. And for every tail that hit the ceiling, sending vibrations that almost shook Naruto's feet off the surface, another would come and try to kill him. They came in rapid succession, and he was gradually losing ground (or ceiling) to run on. With no other alternative, he leaped off the surface mere seconds before the latest spear-like tail could succeed in plunging the blond into the waiting arms of death. He made it halfway from the ceiling to the watery ground before a lone tail made a swipe from his blind spot and shot him towards the wall. Naruto was dazed from the impact, but he still held onto the power in his hand. If he let that go, then they were royally screwed. He saw the other tails coming at him, and he kicked off the crater.
Landing on the water surface prevented a big splash, but the falling tail prevented nothing for the imagination. What made it worse was that Naruto didn't have time to dodge it, so he was left to feel the tremendous downward force pushing him to the shallow waters and have his face meet with the floor at the bottom. He couldn't breathe, and as much as he tried to get the tail off of his back, he couldn't and it was increasing his need for air.
How ironic that a dead man would need to breathe, he thought sardonically before he lost the strength to fight. His concentration waned, and the energy he stored up in his hand began to disperse. Naruto couldn't believe that this would be the end for him. They were so close to resealing the Kyuubi, and this had to happen. When the blackness from his closed eyes began to turn white, the tail's force disappeared. He heard a muffled roar of pain while his collar was pulled back, bringing his face to the surface.
Not wanting to delay any further, Naruto inhaled mouthfuls of air after spitting out the water that got into his mouth and nose. That was too close for comfort. He really thought he'd die a second time.
"This isn't over yet, Naruto."
"Yeah," he said to his father, "not by a long shot." He was thankful that the stored energy didn't disperse all at once; there was still some left, and it was still enough to execute what he had in mind. "We're gonna have to rethink our strategy. I can't get close enough to the fox before it throws me around like a ragdoll."
"It's aware of what you're doing, and taking precautions to prevent it."
"Ideas?"
"Just one. Look at the ceiling."
Naruto complied, but saw only the Kyuubi's decorations of assorted craters. He squinted his eyes. "Ah, I see."
"Got the plan?"
Naruto nodded.
"Good. First thing's diversion. I'm going for five. Get ready for the sixth one."
Naruto nodded again.
"On three. One."
"Two."
"Three!" they said together before Minato disappeared in a yellow flash.
He appeared in front of the Kyuubi, three-pronged kunai in hand, and threw it at the fox's side. The fox raised one clawed hand and swiped it at Minato, but he disappeared in a yellow flash once more and reappeared beside the Kyuubi. He charged up a Rasengan in one hand, the other holding another three-pronged kunai.
As Minato tried to diverse the Kyuubi's attention, Naruto was already charging a Rasengan of his own. But this one was more than it appeared. Due to his failed attempt of controlling the Kyuubi's chakra years ago, he wasn't able to complete Killer Bee's jinchuuriki training, thus unable to use most of the powerful techniques the Kumo nin and his bijuu had come up with together. But what he had in his hand was the pure energy of the Kyuubi from his old reality, and though it was temporary and possibly volatile, he would use it for the best attack he could make.
The Bijuudama (tr. "Tailed Beast Ball").
To be on the safe side, he summoned three clones to help him form the deadly sphere. He gathered the proper amount of chakra from his system to mingle with the dark taint of the demonic chakra in his hand. They didn't mix, but the power was amplifying well enough. But this was Naruto's first attempt at forming the Bijuudama, although he had seen Bee use it many times during the war. He imagined himself dangling on a tripwire, with nothing to balance him but his own arms. There were times when the wind picked up and wobbled the wire, and he had to dexterously regain balance before he could fall. It was a dangerous position for him now that the gentle winds had turned into a hurricane. Naruto had to summon an additional two clones to stabilize the deformation of the sphere.
"It was easier when Bee did it," Naruto muttered, but kept at it. He saw his Dad flash into another location. "That's three." By now, he and his clones were crowded in a circle with the unstable Bijuudama glowing in the middle.
Minato kept at the distraction, hoping that the fox wouldn't notice the sudden flux of demonic chakra concentrated on the growing sphere, but he believed that was only wishful thinking. He flashed two more times before he peered over at his son. The initial plan had been to just weaken the beast so that it wouldn't put up a challenging fight when it was time to imprint the new seal. With the way things had escalated since they opened those gates, he prayed that this would be the final attack. The fight took too long for his comfort, burning through three-quarters of his chakra reservoir already—and they were burning much quicker now that he employed the Hiraishin no jutsu into the fight—and his actual son might not be able to survive much more from the demonic taint. This had to end now.
Naruto dispersed his clones when he finally got the hang of the Bijuudama. The final impression of the massive ball of chakra was magnificent and radiated with power that his hand quaked from just keeping it in his palm. All he had to now do was wait for the sixth flash. And when it occurred, he was suddenly embraced from behind by his father.
"Here we go," he said before both of them disappeared in a yellow flash.
And reappeared below the ceiling, right on top of the Kyuubi. Without warning—it wasn't needed—Minato threw Naruto straight at the Kyuubi, the Bijuudama right in front.
The original use of the Bijuudama was for it to be a long-range projectile made out of compressed chakra, but because this was difficult to control as it was and because it was Naruto's first time using it practically, 'shooting' it was not an option. Neither was throwing it like the Rasenshuriken. Naruto had to resort to the old-fashioned Rasengan way.
The Bijuudama hit its mark, plunging the demon fox to the floor, shockwaves pushing the shallow water surrounding the beast off in a three-yard radius. The fox howled in pain and its screams grew louder once the Bijuudama began tearing the fox's spine like a grinder on flesh. Warm blood burst from the gaping wound, and it got all over Naruto. Once every bit of the Bijuudama had been used up and the fox could no longer stand up due to the amount of pain it was in, he hopped off its back and went to the face of the demon, neither grinning nor gloating.
He might have had the right to gloat since he was finally able to put the furball into submission, but he didn't feel like gloating or being elated at the prospect of winning. No, he was more concerned about the effectiveness of the seal and his counterpart's current condition. And all of this would have been avoided if the Kyuubi had not tried to get out.
No, he thought as his father approached him, I shouldn't blame it all on the fox. I am as much to blame for altering the seal. If I hadn't done that, then this could've been avoided. But if I hadn't done that, then what exactly would it entail for Red in the future? He didn't have an answer for that; the future would be left uncertain.
"This is the end, Kyuubi," Minato said, palm facing towards the beast. "I'm sending you back to the prison from which you crawled out."
"Damn you"—the fox tried to show that it was far from losing, but after a few feet hoisting itself up, it sank back down with another roar of agony, giving both blonds a strong gale of stinky fox breath that billowed their hair and clothes—"you monkey!"
"Its breath smells worse than a sewer," Naruto said through pinched nostrils.
Minato agreed.
The Kyuubi didn't fight back when Minato placed his palm on its forehead, thereby transferring the seal drawn on his palm to its new place. There were no theatrics or great special effects to gesture the success of the seal's integration. The Kyuubi only had to melt into a red-orangey muck that floated on the water's surface. And it slowly streamed back into the darkness of the prison as both blonds watched the sight without a word. When the last drop of the muck reached the borderline of the gates, Minato formed a one-handed Ram seal and uttered, "Seal."
The Kyuubi was now resealed.
"Ugh, wha—?"
Naruto awoke with a splitting headache, his clothes all wet from lying on the shallow waters of the Prison Room. From within the darkness of the closed prison decorated with an assortment of paper tags with runic symbols written on them, two red eyes watched his movements with barely restrained fury that channeled through its glare. He was used to the usual hate coming from the fox from his old reality, so he wasn't fazed. His headache, however . . .
"How much did I drink last night?"
"You didn't drink at all," Rambo answered from his left. "You've been asleep for approximately three days, by the way."
Naruto halted the nursing of his forehead as his mind digested the news. "Three days? Three days? What the heck happened?" The last thing he remembered was his father resealing the Kyuubi and then saying some final words before his chakra reservoir completely ran out. Naruto saw him disappear, reminiscent of what occurred in his old reality, slightly wishing that his counterpart had been there to see Minato off with him. But after that? It became a blank.
"The new seal taking effect," Rambo said. "That's what happened, man." He moved his hoof to Naruto's shoulder, and they were then transported back into the apartment.
"What?" Naruto asked as he sauntered towards the couch and slumped onto it. He realized too late that with his clothes wet, he also made the couch wet. And sitting down with water practically in your butt crack was downright uncomfortable.
"When that seal your father made went into full work mode, the whole mindscape just went haywire all of a sudden. It took me a while to get myself out of the apartment and get to you. You'd probably stay in that coma for another week if I hadn't."
"Why?" Then his nose picked up a pungent smell on his collar. He pulled the collar, sniffed it twice, and reeled his face away as if he had been slapped. It seemed he found the source of his headache. "You. Fuckin'. Peed on me!"
"It was the only way to wake you up. I don't have opposable thumbs or even smelling salts in hand."
"Another week in a coma sounds better than this," he muttered. He stood up, stripped off his shirt, and threw it away. He could just conjure a new one later—lemon-scented, of course. He was going to need a shower after this talk. "I hope the outside world is doing better than in here."
"Oh, it has," the sheep replied. "After the seal worked, Aka-Junko returned to normal, minus clothes and most of his hair. He was treated in Konoha Hospital and kept on twenty-four hour surveillance by ANBU. Of course, Aka-Junko was going in and out of consciousness, so I only have glimpses and vague references of his current condition and the state of affairs of the village."
"Anything else?"
"Emi-san"—that was Rambo's nickname for Kushina—"was admitted in the mental ward."
"What? You're kidding."
"I wish. Apparently seeing your supposed death was the last straw for her. She just snapped. Nothing else I can report on that, though."
"What about the villagers? Will there be retaliations to what this shit-storm did?"
"Not that I know of, truthfully. The ANBU might have been able to keep the room secure, but I haven't heard any shouts or curses from outside."
He sighed and continued rubbing his aching head. "What an ordeal."
"There is something else I should mention."
"More bad news?" Naruto growled. "Can it wait, at least until my head stops feeling like it's been through a sewing machine?"
"Yes, it can," the sheep replied, "but I don't want to wait for your scream of indignation when you find out for yourself. You should take a look at yourself in the mirror, man. You'll understand after you see it."
He cocked an eyebrow but went to the bathroom. Once he saw his reflection in the bathroom mirror, he did scream out of indignation.
"WHAT THE HELL?"
"How's Naruto-kun?"
"In perfect health, Hokage-sama. His healing factor has improved quite significantly. What would've taken months—maybe even years—of healing took less than a week. There was no need for skin grafting; his skin just regrew itself, despite the presence of many third-degree burns."
"You seem to be in utter disbelief, Itou-sensei," Hiruzen remarked. His eyes never left the sleeping form of Naruto Uzumaki, bandaged from head to toe, including the eyes. When he was first admitted into the hospital, he was more of a bloody mess than when he had been the week before. And just like before, the kid had pulled through, basically knocking—bashing was more like it—on Death's door, taunting the deity to come and catch him, and returning to the world of the living. The boy was either unbelievably lucky to survive two fatal incidents or unlucky to be subjected to such pain and resentment at a very young age.
Yusuke Itou, one of Konoha Hospital's professional doctors, pushed up his glasses to the bridge of his nose. "I have the right to, sir. If it were anyone else, they would've been DOA. Uzumaki-kun defies the physical limits of the human body that I wonder if his survival is due to an intervention from Kami-sama."
"It may very well be, doctor," the wizened leader said. "Five years old, experienced sufferings that lesser men would have died from, and his heart still beats."
Itou nodded. "It's time to remove the bandages." He gestured the nurse beside him to accompany him. "Start with the head," he ordered.
Though it sounded strange, Hiruzen was here to watch the 'unveiling.' Tsunade had informed days before that there was an increased activity of chakra flowing into Naruto's head. She first disregarded it as an effect of his healing factor because it was his face that was the most damaged. Nobody would be surprised if Naruto's face had deformed in one way or another after the bandages were off. But just this morning, the chakra flow increased, as if it were working overtime. And just when Tsunade had been about to report this, it returned to normal. A diagnostic jutsu later, and she deemed the face bandage safe to remove.
Hiruzen received the reports and was intrigued of the sequence of events. His gut feeling called for him to be present when it was time to remove the bandages. Unfortunately, Tsunade or Jiraiya couldn't be there to witness this with him, and he didn't want to delay this any more than he had to. Jiraiya was out of the village to check on his spy networks, and Tsunade had an appointment with Kushina. Poor girl was still unresponsive to anything other than smiling at pictures of her son and husband.
Maybe when Naruto-kun wakes up, she'll come back to us, he thought hopefully.
The nurse had already started removing the top part of the bandages. And even from where Hiruzen stood he could tell something was wrong. The nurse stopped rolling the bandages off when she saw a mere glimpse of the 'unveiling.' She eyed the doctor, who looked just as stunned as she was, and then the village leader.
"Continue," Hiruzen said as he inched closer to the hospital bed. He said to Itou, "What do you make of this?"
"I-I-I don't know, sir. I'm not that experienced with ninja in my work, but something tells me that this isn't normal, sir."
"Agreed," he said gravely.
When the bandages on Naruto's head were completely off, the three adults in the room could only gape at his sleeping face. Hiruzen was more shocked than the other two.
"Check his eyes," he ordered. "What color are they?" He had been around long enough to see the faces of the older generation when they were children, and what he was staring at right now was—
"They're blue, sir," Itou whispered. "Blue."
Spiky blond hair, cerulean blue eyes. It was as if looking into the past, looking into the face of the child that would one day become his successor for the role of Hokage. He was seeing a ghost, but the illusion was destroyed by the presence of the whisker marks on both his cheeks. He had to close his eyes, breathe deeply, and open them again. This was not what he was expecting.
Naruto had now become too much like his father.
"My hair!"
"At least it's no longer spiky."
"It's red! Red!"
"Don't forget your eyes. They've changed too."
"What the fuck happened? What the fuck happened?" He combed his crimson red hair with both hands, as if wanting to be sure that this was not an illusion.
The mirror and the few strands he pulled out of his head didn't lie. This was no illusion. Tamed red hair, cool gray eyes. His reflection was no doubt an adult version of Aka-Naruto.
Chapter Afterword:
Who here shat bricks when they read the mindfuck?
Anyway, for my thoughts on Fuinijutsu, I believe it is similar to computer programming. They are created in their own languages and can only do what they're made to do if they're supplied with enough codes—sophisticated codes—to help them run. I'm no computer engineer, but I'm knowledgeable enough to ascertain the required steps when creating a program, which helped set up a better understanding of what I'm trying to convey for fuinjutsu. And while some people will disagree wholeheartedly to my thoughts, that's their opinion. I got my own.