---
When Naruto Uzumaki awoke that morning, the first thing he noticed wasn't the familiar ache in his back from his lumpy futon, nor the way sunlight filtered through his threadbare curtains. No, the first thing he noticed was the distinctly unfamiliar sensation of warmth spreading through his chest—not the physical warmth of body heat, but something deeper. Something that felt suspiciously like... contentment?
This was, naturally, his first clue that something was very, very different.
The second clue came in the form of a voice that definitely hadn't been there when he'd gone to sleep.
"Good morning, sweetheart. Did you sleep well?"
Naruto's eyes snapped open so fast he nearly gave himself whiplash. He bolted upright, head swivelling frantically around his small apartment as if he expected to find an intruder sitting calmly at his kitchen table, perhaps sipping tea and reading the morning paper.
"Who—what—where—" he stammered, his voice cracking in that particularly embarrassing way that reminded him he was still very much twelve years old, despite having finally graduated from the Academy and earned his forehead protector just days ago.
"Shh, it's alright," the voice continued, and there was something in its tone—gentle, warm, infinitely patient—that made Naruto's frantic searching slow to a halt. "I'm not... I'm not exactly here, baby. Not in the way you're thinking."
"I'm going crazy," Naruto announced to his empty apartment with the kind of calm certainty that suggested he'd been expecting this development for years. "All those cup ramen dinners finally did it. I've snapped. My brain has officially given up on reality."
A sound that might have been laughter—soft, musical, and achingly familiar despite the fact that he'd never heard it before—echoed through his mind. *"You're not crazy, Naruto. Though I suppose this situation would make anyone question their sanity."*
"Okay," Naruto said slowly, settling back onto his futon but keeping his eyes alert for any signs of hallucinatory intruders, "let's say, hypothetically, that I'm not having a complete mental breakdown. Who are you, and why are you in my head?"
There was a pause, and when the voice spoke again, it carried a weight of emotion that made Naruto's chest tighten. "My name is Kushina Uzumaki. And I'm... I'm your mother, sweetheart."
The words hit Naruto like a lightning jutsu to the solar plexus. He'd fantasized about this moment countless times—what his parents might be like, what they might say to him, whether they'd be proud of the person he was becoming. But in all his imagination, he'd never quite pictured it happening as a disembodied voice in his head while he sat in his underwear on a futon that smelled vaguely of instant ramen.
"That's..." he started, then stopped, his throat suddenly too tight for words. "You're really...?"
"Yes, baby. I know this is confusing, and I know it's not exactly how either of us imagined this conversation would go. I'm not alive, not exactly, but I'm not gone either. It's... complicated."
"Complicated is one word for it," Naruto muttered, but there was no real irritation in his voice. How could there be? This was his mother. The woman who had given birth to him, who had died protecting him, who had left him with nothing but questions and a legacy he was only beginning to understand.
"I know you have questions—"
"WILL YOU TWO QUIT YOUR MUSHY REUNION AND ACKNOWLEDGE THAT I'M HERE TOO?"
The new voice that exploded through Naruto's consciousness was like the difference between a gentle stream and a tsunami. Where his mother's voice had been warm and comforting, this one was rough, ancient, and carried with it the kind of barely-contained irritation that suggested its owner had been waiting for this moment for quite some time.
Naruto nearly fell off his futon. "What the—who—oh. Oh. You're the Nine-Tails, aren't you?"
"FINALLY! Do you have any idea how long I've been waiting for you to actually visit? Twelve years, brat! Twelve years of sitting in this seal while you run around playing ninja, and not once—not ONCE—do you bother to drop by and introduce yourself properly!"
"I... visit?" Naruto blinked, confusion replacing his initial fear. "You mean I could have been talking to you this whole time?"
"Of course you could have! The seal isn't a prison—well, not completely—it's a meeting place! But did you ever think to meditate, to look inward, to actually try to communicate with the ancient and powerful being sealed within your very soul? NO! You just went about your business like I was some kind of... of... furniture!"
Despite the situation's absurdity, Naruto found himself feeling genuinely apologetic. "I'm sorry! I didn't know! Nobody ever told me I you sealed inside me!"
"Don't take it too personally, Kurama," Kushina's voice cut in, and Naruto could practically hear the smile in her words. "He's been a bit busy trying to survive in a village that treats him like a pariah, and he only just graduated from the Academy. I think we can forgive him for not having perfect etiquette when it comes to sealed bijuu visitation."
"Kurama?" Naruto seized on the name immediately. "That's your name? The Nine-Tailed Fox has a name?"
There was a pause, and when Kurama spoke again, his voice had lost some of its thunderous irritation. "Yes, brat. I have a name. We all do. We're not just mindless beasts of destruction, despite what your precious village might have told you."
Something in Naruto's chest loosened at that revelation. A name meant personality, meant individuality, meant... "You're not just a monster," he said quietly.
"... No. I'm not."
"Now that we've established that everyone here is a person with feelings," Kushina interjected with the kind of patient authority that suggested she'd had practice mediating between stubborn individuals, "perhaps we should explain why you can suddenly hear us."
"Right!" Naruto shook his head, trying to focus despite the surreal nature of having a conversation with two voices in his head—one of whom was his supposedly dead mother, the other a legendary demon fox with anger management issues. "This is new, right? I mean, I think I would have remembered if I'd been hearing voices before now."
"It's new because of what happened last night," Kurama explained, his tone becoming more serious. "Someone tried to invade your body, brat. A foreign soul attempting to overwrite your consciousness and take control of your life."
Naruto's blood ran cold. "Someone tried to... what? Like, take over my body? Mind control?"
"Not mind control, sweetheart. Replacement. This thing wanted to erase you completely and use your body as its new vessel. It would have been like you never existed at all."
"That's..." Naruto swallowed hard, the implications hitting him like a physical blow. "That's like those reincarnation stories, isn't it? Where someone dies and wakes up in someone else's body?"
"Except in those stories, the original person is usually already dead," Kurama growled. "This parasite wanted to murder you from the inside and wear your skin like a costume."
The casual way Kurama described something so horrifying made Naruto shudder. "But it didn't work, obviously, since I'm still me. What happened to it?"
"I squashed it like the insignificant insect it was," Kurama said with evident satisfaction. "Nobody messes with my container. That's MY job."
"Thanks... I think?"
"Kurama destroyed the soul, yes, but something interesting happened with the remnants," Kushina continued. "The invader left behind a fragment of its essence—not its consciousness, but its accumulated knowledge and abilities. It was like a piece of very advanced, very foreign chakra that didn't belong to any natural system."
"And that's where it gets complicated," Naruto guessed.
"When Kurama detected the fragment, he also sensed me—what was left of me. I've been fading away slowly ever since you were born, just a whisper of chakra that your father left behind as a final gift. But when that fragment appeared..."
"I made a decision that was either brilliant or catastrophically stupid," Kurama admitted. "I combined the fragment with your mother's remaining chakra. The artificial knowledge merged with her love and will to protect you, and the result was... unexpected."
"I woke up," Kushina said simply. "Not alive, not exactly, but aware. Present. I'm a chakra entity now, powered by love and enhanced by the echo of otherworldly knowledge. It shouldn't be possible, but here I am."
Naruto sat in silence for a long moment, processing this information. His mother was a chakra ghost powered by love and the recycled soul-fragments of a would-be body thief. His father had apparently left her behind as some kind of spiritual insurance policy. And the Nine-Tailed Fox—Kurama—had deliberately engineered this reunion because... why?
"Why?" he asked aloud.
"Because you're my container, and containers work better when they're not miserable," Kurama said gruffly. "And because she never shut up about missing you."
"I did not—"
"You literally spent years muttering about wanting to see him grow up. It was driving me insane."
"That's not—I was not muttering!"
"'I wonder if he's eating enough vegetables,'" Kurama mimicked in a falsely sweet voice. "'I hope he's making friends.' 'Do you think he knows how proud I am of him?' Mutter, mutter, mutter, for TWELVE YEARS."
Naruto found himself grinning despite the surreal nature of the conversation. "You two argue a lot, don't you?"
"We have philosophical differences," Kushina said primly.
"She's a nag and I'm right about everything."
"He's a stubborn, antisocial fox who thinks violence solves all problems."
"Violence solves most problems."
"See what I mean?"
"This is so weird," Naruto laughed, and it felt good—better than good. When was the last time he'd woken up to friendly voices? When was the last time he'd felt like part of a conversation instead of the target of one?
"So what happens now?" he asked when he'd gotten control of himself. "Do you just... stay in my head forever? Are you going to be commenting on everything I do?"
"Would that bother you?" Kushina asked, and there was something vulnerable in her voice that made Naruto's heart clench.
"Are you kidding?" Naruto shook his head emphatically. "Mom, I've been alone my entire life. The idea that you're here, that both of you are here... it's like the best thing that's ever happened to me."
There was a moment of profound quiet, and Naruto could swear he felt something warm and gentle brush against his consciousness—his mother's love made manifest.
"Then we'll stay," she said softly. "For as long as you want us."
"Which will probably be forever, because you're stuck with us now," Kurama added, but his gruff tone couldn't quite hide the undertone of satisfaction. "And since we're going to be here anyway, we might as well make ourselves useful. I've got centuries of combat experience, and thanks to that fragment your mother absorbed, she's got access to some very interesting ninja techniques from the invader's stolen memories."
"You're going to teach me?" Naruto's voice pitched higher with excitement.
"Of course we are. Family takes care of each other."
The word 'family' hit Naruto like a physical blow, but a good one—like finally finding the missing piece of a puzzle he'd been trying to solve his entire life. The tight knot of loneliness that had lived in his chest for as long as he could remember began to loosen, just a little.
"Family," he repeated quietly, testing the word. "I like that."
"Don't get too sentimental, brat. We're still going to nag you about your terrible habits."
"Speaking of which—Naruto, sweetheart, when was the last time you brushed your teeth?"
"I brushed them... recently?"
"That's not an answer. Go brush your teeth. And while you're at it, you need to eat something that isn't ramen for breakfast."
"She's right. Your diet is atrocious. How do you expect to become a powerful ninja when you're slowly poisoning yourself with processed garbage?"
"Wait, you want me to eat vegetables too?" Naruto stared at his reflection in the cracked mirror across the room, momentarily baffled by the sight of the Nine-Tailed Fox apparently advocating for proper nutrition.
"A healthy container is a powerful container. Besides, if you die of malnutrition, I'll be stuck in whatever afterlife you end up in, and I refuse to spend eternity in whatever passes for ninja heaven."
Naruto grinned at his reflection—the same whiskered, blonde, determinedly optimistic face he'd seen every morning for thirteen years, but somehow it looked different now. Less alone, maybe. "You know what? This is completely insane, and I'm probably going to spend the rest of my life explaining to people why I'm talking to myself, but..."
He paused, considering the bizarre turn his life had taken. A dead mother powered by love and recycled soul fragments. An ancient demon fox with strong opinions about dental hygiene. The kind of family dysfunction that would make the Uchiha clan look well-adjusted.
"...but I think I'm okay with that," he finished, his grin widening. "Besides, how many people can say they've got the Nine-Tailed Fox nagging them to eat their vegetables?"
"Not many, I'd imagine," Kushina laughed. "Now go brush your teeth before Kurama starts lecturing you about gum disease."
"I know things about gum disease that would terrify you, brat."
Still grinning, Naruto headed toward his tiny bathroom, shaking his head at the absolute absurdity of his new reality. Yesterday, he'd been the village pariah with no family and no one who cared whether he lived or died—a dead-last Academy student who'd finally managed to graduate through sheer stubbornness and a forbidden jutsu.
Today, he had a mother made of chakra and love, a bijuu roommate with strong opinions about oral hygiene, and the strangest, most dysfunctional family unit in the history of the shinobi world.
Somehow, that felt like a pretty good trade.
**—End of Chapter 2—**