猿飛ヒルゼン

The putrid, suffocating air dissipated and the barrier that Minato had set up to keep people out finally fell.

Hiruzen felt a burden lift from his shoulders, and the tightness in his belly loosened. Minato had done it. They'd survived, and the naked relief he felt could be seen in the faces of those who had followed him.

"He did it." One man said, his voice laden with gratitude. "The Fourth, Namikaze Minato. He vanquished the Demon!"

"We won!" Another man cheered.

"No. We did not." One of the ANBU, wearing a porcelain-white tiger ANBU mask, said as they entered the clearing where they had seen the Nine-tails rear its head over the treetops. "Tonight is a night of loss. There is no victory to be had."

They saw her as they entered the clearing, a figure sitting prone in the center of a matrix of seals, her neck hanging down as she seemed to fixate on something in her lap. Nearby, a baby boy lay snugly in a basket of blankets. He was sound asleep.

"Kushina!" Hiruzen called as he approached her, hoping against hope that she was alive.

And, as if in answer to his prayer, she stirred. Her face was a ghastly visage. Her eyes had rolled up, leaving only a small sliver of her irises visible from under her open eyelids. Her face was unnaturally pale, and a small ring of shadows hung beneath her eyes.

A sound emitted from her throat, a short dry moan. "Uuh." She said, and she blindly held up the object in her hand. It was a storage scroll. "Tuh-"

Others began arriving at the clearing, and Hiruzen quickly held her still, gently willing her hands back down to her sides. "Enough, Kushina. Do not say another word. You need immediate treatment, let me-"

A loud, dry rasping groan tore out of the dying woman's throat as she violently fought off his restraining hand with unexpected strength. The sudden movement made Hiruzen jump, his old heart suddenly racing with an unwelcome fear.

"Kushina?"

The woman calmed and held the scroll up to him, urging him to take it.

"What is it?" Hiruzen asked as he slowly made to take the scroll.

Her lips began to move, and her voice dropped perilously low. "Body."

Hiruzen took the scroll and called to those that now surrounded him. "Are any of you versed in medical Jutsu?"

"Old man."

Hiruzen turned back to her worriedly. A couple Shinobi came to them, the medic-nin he had called for presumably. "Lord Third." One announced.

"Wait." Hiruzen held up a hand as he stared into the eyes of the Nine-tails' former vessel. Her green irises had returned to a proper position, and her voice seemed to have come back, if maybe a little weak. Hiruzen resisted the urge to force her into silent rest with an Illisuion. It was clear she had something urgent to tell him, and he decided that it would be better to let her speak.

"Jiji." Kushina repeated affectionately, her voice almost a whisper. She paused.

"Yes?"

"His body." She paused again, as if the mere act of speaking tired her, and Hiruzen knew, at that point, that there was no saving this woman. It saddened him greatly, and he knew he would not be alone. Jiraiya would be stricken with grief.

"It's here," Kushina continued disjointedly. "...his soul... the Dead Demon's mask."

"The Dead Demon's mask?" Hiruzen looked down at the scroll and reached a sudden understanding. "Minato… he used the Dead Demon to seal the Nine-tails didn't he?"

He looked to Kushina for an answer, but she was gone. Her body had fallen limp and her eyes had taken on a glassy look. Uzumaki Kushina, master of seals and last known surviving citizen from the Land of Whirlpool, was dead.

One of the medic-nin that had been on standby knelt and put out a diagnostic hand. "She's dead."

"I see." Hiruzen responded slowly and swallowed a lump that had risen in his throat. The evening had been beyond awful. Minato and Kushina and hundreds of villager's killed in a single night. The village itself had suffered immense structural damage. Too many lives had been cut down by the Demon's hatred, and they didn't even know what had caused its escape in the first place. He swallowed again, fighting back another lump in his throat, fighting off the grief that sought to overtake him.

"Lord Third." A Shinobi appeared at his side. "The child. What do we do about the child?"

The child. Minato's son. He had nearly forgotten. "Let me see him."

Another Shinobi, this one wearing an oxen ANBU mask, carried the newborn to the now de facto leader of the village.

'Take care of my son.'

Hiruzen pocketed the scroll that Kushina had handed him and reached to take baby Naruto into his arms. "I will nurse him for now." He looked around at the gathered Shinobi. More and more were coming, dozens upon dozens arriving on the scene where the Demon had last been seen, where they knew it had been vanquished. The village's defenders all beheld the girl who had once served as the Nine-tailed Demon's vessel. More than a few saw her and felt relief. They would not be living under the risk of a vessel again, always fearing that the Demon would break loose. Their night of disaster served to justify all their prejudices. A vessel was a danger to the village.

Such were the thoughts of a number of men and women from among the crowd, many of them never wanting to face the terror that they had faced that night ever again. The Lord Third held the tiny blonde infant in his arms and gazed out upon the crowd, unaware of the difficulties that baby Naruto would be facing from them in the future. The gathered people looked to him, their former leader, and waited for him to give an order or deliver some sort of speech.

"The Fourth has given his life to seal the Nine-tails into this boy."

A collective noise from a sizable portion of the crowd was emitted from the crowd followed by words of disapproval, both whispered and boldly shouted aloud. It was at this moment that Hiruzen knew that he had made a mistake, had doomed the boy in his arms to the same ugly fate that his mother had suffered in her own childhood. There was nothing for it now but to carry on.

"Silence!" He barked severely, and the chatter faded.

"We may have overcome the source of tonight's disaster, but our homes are now in shambles. What are you doing here? Gather the injured. We will need temporary shelters, both for them and for the many who have now lost their homes. We shall grieve later. There is much to be done and very little time. Do not think yourselves safe for even a moment. Word of this disaster will reach the other Shinobi states, and the Leaf is now in greater danger than it has ever been before."

There was a moment of silence as the Lord Third gathered himself and knelt next to the corpse of the Nine-tails' former vessel, and for an instant, he wasn't a leader or the figure of authority that he had been just moments before. For an instant, the Lord Third looked like nothing more than a frail old man who had had to endure the tragedy of his children's deaths, an old man who seemed to want nothing more than to let his old heart and body rest. As if woken from a collective trance, the crowd of Shinobi came to their senses and dispersed. Some headed back to check on their families, others left to help sift through the rubble that the rampage of the Nine-tailed Demon had left behind, to look for lives that could be salvaged.

Hiruzen turned back to Kushina's corpse, her baby still in his arms. Her body would need to be collected and prepared for burial.

Hiruzen adjusted his hold on the baby, thinking on the storage scroll that Kushina had handed him, the one that contained Minato's body, and wondered what he was to do with it.