A/N: I warn you: go back if you're triggered; just either skip this chapter - or stick with the first two sections of it, which are "safe" - and move to the next chapter when it comes out soon. This chapter is violent. I have dreaded writing it in some ways and managed to skirt around some things as I thought about the well-being of my readers (and myself.) The third section of the story briefly mentions an attempted sexual assault: that's what I'm most concerned about for y'all.

DISCLAIMER: I don't own anything from the Naruto universe.

Thinking (+ flashbacks, "Mito speaking to the Kyuubi in her mindscape," etc.)

Emphasis

Bijuu, etc. speaking

Bijuu, etc. thinking

Minato was surprised with the turn of events, to put it mildly.

Rasa agreed to most of his peace treaty suggestions within the first days of their arrival, barely studying it - and now he was faced with a boy his son's age. A little boy who had been given a terrible burden, just like his children. He closed his eyes as he looked at the terribly inadequate seal that had been put on little Gaara.

"I have a son your age, Gaara-kun," he said, smiling at the frightened, shy child. Gaara seemed more afraid of his own father than he did of the Yondaime Hokage, a stranger to him, however. He reached out to pat his head and tried not to flinch when the boy's sand attacked him. Rasa scolded his son - his baby boy - harshly, but shut up when he saw the glare Minato threw at him. "I promise not to hurt you; I only want to help."

Gaara shook all over, trying to ignore the screaming in his head that demanded blood. "I don't want to hurt you! I don't want to hurt anybody, I promise!"

Minato nodded his head, noting that Rasa had almost involuntarily put his face in his hands and slightly backed away when he heard his son's desperate little cry. His hands flew through the needed seals, and he forced his palm down onto the boy's abdomen, closing his eyes to further protect himself from the boy's defensive sand. "Four Symbols Seal!"

The boy shouted before the sand fell to the floor, and Gaara fell unconscious.

"Is it done?" Rasa asked hesitantly, glad that the Hokage's guard hadn't attacked his jinchuuriki son when Minato was hit. The Hokage had ordered them to stand down through the sealing, but he wasn't sure that if their circumstances were reversed, his guard would do the same - or if he'd even want them to stand back.

"Hai," Minato said, looking over the seal as his sensei moved to his side - as well as how he'd configured it to work with Gaara's previous pathetic excuse for a seal. The sealing had taken quite a bit of his chakra! "Because both his seals have an even number of elements, your son will still be able to access his chakra. And hopefully," he added, looking at the dark bags under the child's eyes, "he'll be able to sleep in peace after this."

Rasa thanked the gods above and sent out a silent message to his dearly departed wife, letting her know that their nightmare might finally be over. "Do you think it's safe for him to meet his siblings?" he asked quietly.

Minato schooled his features and offered him a (fake but) serene smile. "Family is important, ne?" he asked, feeling sick. He missed Kushina and Mito terribly. And Naruto didn't even remember his sister anymore, and he somewhat regretted asking Kakashi to put a jutsu on his son that would ensure that. For now.

It was only for now: just a temporary solution.

He assured Rasa that Jiraiya was capable of observing little Gaara while they went back to his nearby office.

"Do your other children have your abilities?" Minato asked curiously since Rasa had been so bold and open with him on this trip. "Perhaps I shouldn't have asked," he admitted as his remaining guard and the guard platoon were allowed entrance into and around Rasa's office.

His boys were so overprotective!

Rasa ran his hand through his hair and shook his head before holding his arm out. "What you've done," he began, reigning in control of his nearly overwhelming emotions, "what you've done has made us lifelong allies, Minato-sama." He grasped the Hokage's arm in a gesture of goodwill, and of a promise. "Suna and Konoha's alliance will not be severed or defeated as long as I live."

Minato smiled, incredibly grateful for those words. He knew, though, that circumstances could change, but wanted to uphold his end of the deal. "Allies," he agreed, grasping the Kazekage's arm. "And friends."

Rasa smiled back at him, and for a moment, Minato was stunned. He didn't think he'd ever seen that look on his face before: that Rasa was even capable of beaming like that, and looking so obviously relieved. And it somehow reminded him of…

"Did you know that my great-grandmother was an Uzumaki?" Rasa asked, feeling nearly freed of his overwhelming responsibilities for a moment, but knowing that he wasn't. "Kushina-sama was one as well, was she not?"

Minato chuckled despite what felt like never-ending grief over his deceased wife. "Kushina was originally from Uzushio, although I did not know about your family, Rasa-sama. We - and our families - seem to have a lot in common."

"Indeed we do," Rasa said, wondering if Minato's child was also a demon-container (because of when the Kyuubi attacked. The date of its attack on Konoha, the Habanero's death soon after, and their child's birth coincided too much.) "Now let's get to work on this trade agreement!"

They had only been in formal negotiations for a few hours when an urgent message arrived from Hi no Kuni. Minato read it and closed his eyes. He made a clone to Hiraishin to the Daimyo, praying that his daughter had remained safe.

When the clone dispelled within minutes, he stood. "Rasa-sama. Please forgive me, but I must cut our meeting short."

"Is everything alright?" Rasa asked, trying to ignore the way his brother-in-law's eyes widened behind his ANBU mask as if in disbelief that he was capable of showing empathy. He's probably forgotten that I do have a heart.

I have a lot to make up for, Rasa thought.

"Everything will be," the Hokage replied, remembering to continue coiling his chakra tightly within him as he tried to remain calm. "I shall leave Jiraiya in my stead, and will return as soon as possible. If you'll excuse me."

"Of course."

.

"I wanna go home, you one-eyed, mummy bastard! Where's Bushy Brows and those Sword Lovers?"

Like anyone he considered a proper shinobi, Danzo did not allow his disgust for the child's lack of manners to cloud his judgment. It was simply one more flawed trait that would have to be subdued in the child. "As I said before, Naruto-kun, I have been asked to guard you in Maito-san's and Uzuki-san's stead," he lied. It had taken a lot of men to incapacitate the Youth-spewing Jonin, especially, but they had prevailed. Now Maito-san was secured and sealed within his base. Uzuki-san and Gecko-san were in a nearby medical bay, being kept in medically-induced comas.

The brat shouldn't have run away from them if they were so important to him, should he have?

Danzo hoped to learn what had poisoned Gecko-san, in case it happened again to another shinobi. He ordered his men to find an antidote - or vaccine, etc. if it was something other than poison that they didn't anticipate.

"There has been an attack at the capital, and as the Hokage's son and jinchuuriki, your safety is paramount," Danzo added.

Naruto scoffed, but scrunched his nose up, wondering what some of those words meant. "Para… Jinchy-what now?"

"Paramount means important, Naruto-kun: you are a person of great importance," Danzo explained, wondering if the Hokage was teaching his son anything, or if young Naruto was simply as tactless and dense as he believed his mother to be, especially when the child seemed to puff up in pride regarding his words. "Your father has not told you that you are the vessel for the Kyuubi?" he asked duplicitously.

"Wh- what's a vessel?" the young boy asked hesitantly. Naruto was freaking out! The Kyuubi? The Kyuubi killed Kaa-san!

Danzo smirked as he turned away before sitting down across from the little brat. "A vessel is a container."

"Like a jar? Or a scroll?" Naruto asked curiously.

"Yes," Danzo replied, as he watched the boy try to figure out his burden. It should only be a short matter of time before he received confirmation that his forces overwhelmed the capital, he believed. "You must be strong to contain the Kyuubi."

"It's," Naruto began quietly, holding his stomach: he thought he had seen a seal there once before, [some kids were learning to mould chakra at the Academy, (he already knew how,)] but thought he'd imagined it cuz his big brother had been looking at a book of seals with that red eye of his that day. Kashi-nii-san was a weirdo but usually let him do his own thing, like spying on that sealing book while he was reading it. He never let him read the orange one that was always in his face, though!

"It's… inside of me?" he eventually asked.

Naruto felt sick! No: he felt worse than sick! He had a big horrible thing inside of him that killed his mom and all those other people? How did that happen?! How was it possible?

It wasn't true, was it?

His dad must hate him if it was true!

But wait: his dad loved him! He said it all the time!

"Yes, Naruto-kun," Danzo said, smiling in what he thought was a grandfatherly way. He'd have to train the jinchuuriki differently than he did his other drones, at least until the brat trusted him or he was properly mentally conditioned. "You have an enormous responsibility to Konoha, but Sandaime-sama trusted that you would be able to live up to it."

"He did?" Naruto asked in awe. His greatest heroes were his father and Sandaime-sama! Sandaime-sama had killed the Kyuubi. Wait! "The Kyuubi is dead," he said, his quiet voice trembling even though he wanted to remain strong.

"A chakra construct cannot be killed, Naruto-kun." Danzo was pleased that the child seemed stunned but accepted his words as he began to hyperventilate. Obviously, his father WAS teaching him something. He forced the boy's head between his knees and ordered him to calm down at once.

Once the child was somewhat in control of his emotions, he spoke. "I'd like to help you become stronger so you can protect both yourself and the village from the Kyuubi."

Naruto nodded: he wanted to be stronger, but his father said "all good things in good time" and crap like that. "What about Tou-san?" he asked quietly, then felt panic rise in his chest. "Is Tou-san okay?!"

"Of course, Naruto-kun," Danzo said, forcing himself to smile again. "Your father is widely known as the world's strongest shinobi: the strongest shinobi since Lord Second." Danzo bit down his disgust and envy, vying to use the child to make him stronger than anyone before him. For Konoha!

Naruto nodded, having heard how strong and fast his father was many times. He forced himself to take his hand off his tummy and gripped the chair as tightly as he could. "Will he help us?"

"Oh, yes," Danzo said smugly. "He'll be compelled to," he said under his breath.

"What's co- compelled mean?"

Danzo momentarily scowled. What a horrible brat…

"Pathetic."

"I'm not," Mito snarled, sick of the fox's attitude. She wasn't sure how long she'd been being held prisoner, but was thirsty, famished, and sick to death of fucking everything! The fox's nastiness on top of it? She didn't need it.

Kurama smirked. He was glad that his vessel still had a fighting spirit despite her circumstances.

And weren't her circumstances interesting? Or disturbing, he reluctantly admitted to himself. Humans were so predictable and disgusting, although he could admit that Mito-2 was different from most humans he had been exposed to and completely different from her horrible namesake.

It was obvious to Mito that her second seal had been compromised, and now she was sitting directly in front of the fox's cage that her grandfather-figure died to secure. She wouldn't admit that she was scared - the fox would probably kill her for saying anything like that, anyway, plus she had her pride - but she was in a "difficult" situation.

Kazuma was at least half-insane. So far, from listening to him mutter to himself like the nutter he was, he planned to force her father to resign in favor of someone else, and to install another member of the Daimyo's family: one that agreed with him to "unite the Land of Fire." Because of the (shitty) seals he continued putting on her, she was in and out of consciousness, usually only aware of what was happening long enough to get knocked around to keep her incapacitated when she inevitably fought back.

Kazuma had not counted on her being as strong as she was even without being able to use her chakra. She smirked just thinking about the bones of his she'd broken, and the way his swollen, black and blue face looked now. She was confident that his orbital bone had been shattered.

Of course, what she'd done had only infuriated him, and he made her pay for it.

I probably look like hell, she thought to herself just before screaming and regaining consciousness when she felt a kunai pushed into and down her back.

Fuck! He was trying to remove the Hiraishin marker her father had on her!

"Please STOP," she cried in a hoarse voice and wanted to clutch her torn pajama top as Kazuna tossed some of her peeled-off flesh aside, looking pleased with himself. Kami: her body was nearly exposed to him! She tried to calm her racing heart, remembering that she was a kunoichi medic. As soon as she had her chakra back, she could heal herself, and… And…

"Apologies," Kazuma said insincerely. "If you'd simply stop fighting, I wouldn't have to hurt you. …I knew that wasn't a seal for the demon," he added. He ripped the kunai across her shorts, making her howl at him again. "Shut up. I'm not interested in harming you: I'm only looking for additional seals."

"I don't have any other ones - you fucking PERVERT," she said, trying not to cry. She couldn't help but suck up a whimper, though, when he moved her around, checking her entire body for more seals. At least… at least he didn't touch me that way … He'd only moved her arms and legs, and… And...

"Please, Kazuma-san. You're a… good man," Mito said, hating that she had to stoop this low while trying to hide (or more accurately, wishing she could hide.) "You're a FATHER!" She realized that by moving her around when he was trying to… see all of her, she could move her hands, now. But she couldn't use her chakra! He had really fucked up her chakra system.

Kazuma laughed, but it wasn't a happy sound.

"You are a father, aren't you?" she asked in a little over a whisper. She hoped that if she could keep him talking, she'd learn something (and an additional benefit was that he potentially wouldn't damage her further - if she could restrain her own fury and not piss him off more.)

"Sora-kun is a tool. The Ninetails took my family!" He refused to look at the pity he thought he saw in the teenager's dual-toned eyes. He threw a blanket over her.

"Th- thank you," she said, keeping all animosity and the hatred she felt for him out of her voice. God, she wanted to kill this guy. If she had killed all those other shinobi, she'd damn well kill this guy, too.

"Apologies," he said again, before punching her in the face, knocking her straight into her mind palace.

Mito blinked hard, trying to reorient herself as she'd somehow arrived in the basement. "Please help me."

How she was communicating to the Kyuubi when she could barely talk was something she'd have to reflect upon later.

"And what would I get out of helping you?"

"What do you want?" Mito asked.

Kurama couldn't look at her: she was a fucking beat-up mess and it hurt to look at her! "You know what I want. I want my freedom; I want my revenge!"

"I do, too."

Inari help him, but Kurama believed her. "It won't be easy."

"Nothing important ever is."

"Fucking horrible human." Mito tried to grin at him, and Kurama realized he'd have to regrow some of her teeth. Permanent teeth! What a pain in the ass! "You look like shit." Mito stared at him for several long moments.

"You'd probably say that even if I was all made up, Kyuubi-sama."

"That's because makeup wouldn't help you," he said truthfully. Humans were hideous, and Mito had weird hair on top of it. "How can I help you when you can't access either your or my chakra?" he asked rhetorically.

Mito groaned as she began to feel what her body had gone through, even here in the basement of her mind palace. "I - I obviously need to get out of here."

"And then what?" Kurama wondered whether she'd figure out what he was thinking, and was trying to convince himself not to help her until she did. "You don't know where you are."

What the hell was he even thinking, aiding my jinchuuriki? Have I lost my mind?!

There were things about Mito he understood. He had a father, a father he loved, and so did Mito. Although Mito's father was but a speck of ant feces compared to my own. He had siblings, and Mito was ridiculously loyal to the sibling she'd yet to even meet.

These were things he could respect. But she was human and his jailor. -Those were things that were nearly unforgivable.

Mito whimpered as she finally pointed to her forehead; her arms might not be bruised and her hands not pinned together here in the basement of her Mind Palace as they were in reality, but they still hurt. "I have the Strength of a Hundred Seal from when I was partnered with Katsuya-sama before. Maybe if we can use that?"

She groaned and blinked several times, finding herself in front of Kazuma again, but this time she had been thrown behind bars: real bars. That wound in her back was killing her, and it was so frickin' deep! She scoffed when she saw that the flesh was still just laying there on the floor on the other side of her newest cage. Could her father track her with that? From what she could see, the Hiraishin marker was intact: Kazuma had just peeled the thing off of her.

As if she were a fucking potato!

Bastard. I'll get you for this.

"You're awake again?" Kazuma asked before he tensed, listening for a coded knock before he relaxed. "Elder Eren," he greeted the honored ninja monk - one of the few he knew he could count on. "What is the word?"

Mito noticed that the elder looked pale and wanted to mock his unease but naturally kept her mouth shut. Then he looked at her for entirely too long, asking to speak with Kazuma in the hallway. Mito watched him leave, hating that he was giving her that look again, but needing to see if she could figure out where they were now. Unfortunately, she couldn't see anything recognizable or significant, although she'd recoiled at the way he was looking at her.

Thank Kami, she still had a blanket covering most of her body.

Kurama moved closer to the crappy bars of his own prison, hating that by killing Mito, he would end his own existence. Only if she unsealed the cage door, could he even potentially be free.

He also hated that supposed elder. He could sense negative emotions, and he knew what that bastard wanted from his vessel.

Mito drew her thumb through the blood coming from the wound on her back. "Kyuubi-sama, I have an idea."

The pervert elder returned alone and Mito began carefully going through certain hand seals behind her back since her hands were still tied. By using the muscles in her arms, she caused the blanket to slip down below her chest and froze.

"I finally have you alone," the old man said, "and all to myself," he breathed, letting himself into the young woman's cell.

No, no, no, no, no!

"I'm glad you're awake," he said sleazily in that stupid higher-than-normal-pitched voice of his. "So beautiful!"

"Stay away from me," Mito quietly demanded, forgetting, for a moment, all of her kunoichi training.

"Oh. I'm afraid I can't do that, Darling." He began to drop his robes and Mito nearly went into shock.

"Unacceptable! Get it together," Kurama raged. He realized that by smacking into the bars of his cell, he had taken too much time and looked at his whimpering jinchuuriki and put a single claw through his cage, straight into Mito's forehead. The effect was instantaneous.

"I'm going to kill you," Mito breathed, fearing nothing anymore. Her Strength of a Hundred seal was quickly traveling over her body, black lines having traced across her face and body - allowing her to break free from her binds. Eren was scrambling back, but Mito felt her chakra falling again and panicked - but only for a second. Putting her palm into the blood running down her back, she went through a different set of hand seals.

Boar → Dog → Bird → Monkey → Ram. "Kuchiyose no jutsu!" She disappeared in a puff of smoke, never witnessing the hell that broke loose at that same time. When the jutsu cleared, Mito found herself nearly helplessly lying in a weird place, her remaining chakra from the seal quickly draining away from her. Was this a different area of Mt. Myoboku than any she'd seen before? It certainly wasn't the Shikkotsu Forest.

A chibified version of an extremely dangerous summon approached her, proving that this was not the toad's mountain, and Mito trembled. "Oh, my."

Eren turned to see the furious blue eyes and blonde hair of the Yondaime Hokage. "What have you done to my daughter?" the Flash hissed as his head was smacked into the concrete wall.

Eren couldn't feel his arms and couldn't breathe! The small room was becoming overrun with more shinobis. Shinobis that were loyal to the Yondaime Hokage!

"Sensei, I saw the seal," Kakashi yelled out over the chaos that, more than everything else, his sensei's unleashed chakra and Killing Intent were causing as he and Minato's Guard Platoon tore through those at the site.

"Where is my daughter?" the Hokage snarled.

"I - I don't know!"

"Genma! Bring me Inoichi," the Hokage demanded before a Rasengan blazed forth in his right hand. He held it up in front of the definite pervert and potential rapist's eyes. "I'm going to make sure you never do anything like this again," he said in a cold voice.

Minato plowed the jutsu straight into the man's groin. His flesh flew everywhere as he screamed. The Hokage let the jutsu drop to make sure the perpetrator - one of his daughter's kidnappers - didn't immediately die. He wanted this man to feel unimaginable pain and suffer for as long as humanly possible. His guard reappeared in Flying Thunder Formation, this time with Inoichi Yamanaka in the center. "Inoichi, find out everything."

"Minato, we've got a problem," Inoichi yelled. He didn't know what the fuck was happening here!

"Do I look like I care?" Minato sneered. "Do your damn job!"

"Yes sir, but Naruto is missing."

Minato stopped, feeling like his breath and soul had just left his body. "Start with him then," he said in an empty voice, pointing to Kazuma. Kazuma was too terrified to do anything after seeing what happened to his comrade: his comrade who was still screaming and writhing in pain, missing his…

"You're a fucking monster," the traitor brokenly whispered before Inoichi delved into his mind.

"You have no idea," Minato said to a silent, attentive room. He looked around the room and took a deep, steadying breath. His daughter's Hiraishin marker had been carved out of her and was lying curled up on the floor. "Haven't you heard about me?"