Golden chains crossed into a half circle and rose into a vast barrier.
"Why? For the balance of tailed beasts, for the nation, for the village, must Naruto be the sacrifice?"
The furious voice thinned and faded inside the seal.
Mo Ke could call it luck. He had joined the great transmigration tide and landed in a world he knew well, the world of Naruto.
The instant he awoke, a flood of memories crashed in. His small head had no time to sort them before his eyes rolled back and darkness took him again.
Maybe it was long. Maybe it was a blink. When he opened his eyes, joy and dread collided.
Yes, he had crossed into Naruto. Yes, he had dropped right into the Nine-Tails' Night, that epic checkpoint where the prince of destiny stacked cheats like cards.
But when he looked around, he saw one big blond and one small blond. He saw a redhead with eight shining chains sprouting from her back. Beyond that there was only a lattice of chains.
Behind the taller blond stood a grim reaper silhouette biting a blade and clutching prayer beads, arguing with the redhead.
He couldn't hear every word, but he knew the script. Words about love and village. The famous moment where Minato, nearly drained of chakra, still pulled out the Reaper Death Seal and tried to sway his wife.
And the part where they set up their son for a lifetime of misery.
Mo Ke remembered the manga. This scene had a barrier. These crisscross chains were it.
Inside that barrier were three people and one beast.
Question. If there are only three people and one beast, and I can see three people with my own eyes, then who am I?
Answer. I… must be that beast.
The instant he realized it, a mountain of memory bucked inside his skull. PTSD from Adamantine Sealing Chains flared and exploded.
"I am the incarnation of calamity, ender of the shinobi world, the ultimate of tailed beasts, the companion of the Sage of Six Paths, the Nine-Tailed Demon Fox, Kurama, Kurama-Maha!"
A fox is canidae. Canidae is dog, right?
Mo Ke muttered in his heart. What a dog's dinner of a speech. Ender of the shinobi world, really. No shame. Little Hashirama had you in his palm.
The fox bound in chains smoked with faint blue haze. A phantom of a snarling yokai flickered over its head. The saying goes one Buddha is born in anger, the second ascends. Fitting for a so-called heir to Ninja Buddhism. Look at that fox. Enlightenment by rage.
Mo Ke ignored the heavy, intimidating ocean of memory gnawing in his mind.
A thousand years of Kurama's memories dwarfed his own twenty-odd years like a drop in the sea.
If he fused recklessly, Kurama would seize the wheel.
Worse, the argument below had quieted.
Blond and redhead were holding each other's gaze. Kushina was wobbling. Minato was spinning dreams of tomorrow.
If he did nothing now, he would be split in half and sent to dance in a ghost's belly.
Mo Ke's thoughts went white-hot. He rifled the plot. He hunted for cracks.
Beg for mercy and offer to be Minato's summoning beast?
No. Not to brag, but an unshackled Nine-Tails was too strong. Minato was strong, but he was not on Madara's tier. He had neither the power nor the resolve to give a fox freedom, even limited freedom.
Become a prophet and spill the next few years?
Tell Minato that if he dies here, Naruto's childhood will be hell, so stop swinging the reaper's blade before he hurts fox and human alike?
Not entirely hopeless. Yet Minato already knew Naruto would suffer, or he would not be pleading with Kushina. He just never imagined how dark Konoha would become. Naruto's tragedy would be worse by miles.
If not for Asura's chakra pushing Naruto toward the light, who would have destroyed Konoha first? Not Almighty Push, but a Great Rasen Wheel.
Meanwhile Menma Uzumaki's childhood was not tragic, and he still wanted to burn the village down. Fate plays mirror games.
Mo Ke had never understood the shinobi villages. They called a jinchuriki's identity top secret, then made sure every villager treated them like plague. Every village did it. Every jinchuriki child suffered.
If that is the rule, what is the point of secrecy?
Civilians might not know the fox is the Nine-Tails. You think spies do not? Konoha even told people Naruto was the very monster from that night. Ridiculous.
If Kishimoto had serialized in China, the comment sections would have re-educated him.
Time was short. His thoughts kept drifting into rants. He had to pick a path. A less horrible death first. Justice later.
Start with Kushina. Minato was too used to speaking from a pedestal. As a kid he watched Kushina get bullied and refused to help because he believed she was strong enough to handle it. That was his reason.
Mo Ke's scalp tingled. This was never about winning a fight. She was a foreign child, isolated, freezing under endless cold shoulders. You decided she was fine and watched from the side.
Even if she could win, then what? When no one around you will stand with you, that fracture can twist a heart. No wonder she opposed turning Naruto into a jinchuriki.
Preach love without having tasted the other person's pain. Wrap it in the Will of Fire and call it noble.
Mo Ke suspected the real reason Kushina agreed tonight was simple. She was dying. She had no time left to argue. The chains on her were already slackening.
He looked to Minato, hands set to weave the seal. He was out of time too.
Mo Ke steadied his mind, fixed his vertical pupils on Minato, and chose to laugh first, to break the ice.
"Ha, look at you now, Fourth Hokage. A Hokage who does not know the darkness of his own village, who believes his sacrifice will make this child a hero. Naive and laughable."
Branches shook under the thunder of his voice. Minato did not flinch. His hands did not stop.
The joke bounced off. Time for poison.
"Do you not wonder, Fourth Hokage?"
"How did the enemy know the delivery site for Kushina?"
"Why has Root, which commands most of the ANBU, not shown a single operative even though I am tearing your village apart?"
"And where is one of the Legendary Sannin, Orochimaru?"
At last, the questions pierced the moment. Kushina's eyes flicked. Minato's brow pinched.
Kushina's delivery site was a secret within secrets. And it was true. Root and that man who loved Konoha's darkness were nowhere in sight.
Kushina's doubt deepened. The masked intruder had been driven off. The only threat left was the Nine-Tails. Yet how could there be only the Third Hokage outside the barrier? Where were Konoha's other titans?
The elders' faces rose in her mind like a bad taste.
Mo Ke pressed. "Politics again. Looks like your Hokage's seat does not please certain people."
"If you die under village infighting, what makes you believe your child will grow to be a hero?"
"In fact, what makes a loser of palace intrigue think he can even keep his child alive to adulthood?"
"Will you trust your household guard that includes chūnin?"
"Will you rely on that teacher who is either soaking in the bath or walking to the bath?"
"Or the student who lost his will and let his own father die to politics, then sank into the dark?"
"Or the Third outside the barrier who treats you like a puppet, retired in name while clinging to power?"
Minato's and Kushina's faces changed. The more hot-blooded Kushina looked at Minato with hurt and panic. Minato frowned at the fox, hands stilling for a breath. Why did a chained beast know so much?
It was working. The Third and others were testing the barrier, but the Adamantine chains even muffled sound.
"Perhaps you already sensed it. Your family will fall like the White Fang. This is a political execution."
"And still, for Konoha, for your so-called Will of Fire, you will sacrifice yourself. You will sacrifice Kushina. You will sacrifice your newborn."
"Silence, Nine-Tails. You are only a beast. You do not understand human love. Naruto will grow up in Konoha's care, healthy and happy."
Minato's shout cracked the air. He had caught Kushina wavering and rushed to cut Mo Ke off.
"I may be a beast, but I have lived for a thousand years. There is no scheme I have not seen. Your anxious denial tells me you know the darkness."
"Oh, right. The one you love most has always been the village. Even your marriage to Kushina looks like an arrangement by the top."
Minato's anger was good. Mo Ke did not want silence. He wanted friction. He turned his massive head to Kushina and went for the heart.
"So funny, Kushina. Your life is packed with lies. I still laugh at what Mito told you."
"'You and I are the same. We came here to seal the Nine-Tails. A jinchuriki must fill the void in her heart with love.' Hilarious."
"When Madara captured me to fight Hashirama, Uzumaki Mito had already been married into Konoha for over a decade. Her granddaughter was nearly born. Is that what it means to come here only to be a vessel?"
"The only one brought to this village purely as a container was you."
His voice rolled on. Memories of plot holes he had cursed in his past life tasted sweet now that he could throw them in the faces of those who lived them.
"Interesting. Looks like your child will suffer even more than you."
"You were chosen young and lied into Konoha. At least they gave you shelter. Your child Naruto, son of the Hokage, last of the Uzumaki in Konoha, was marked as a vessel before his first cry. Marked by the village and by his own father."
He leaned forward, chains clattering, and locked eyes with the couple.
"Why did a cute foreign girl like you get shunned? Minato, the only blond in class, never got mocked. Convenient."
"Why did the 'secretly designated' backup jinchuriki get tailed so easily by 'Cloud spies'?"
"Spies? Wearing their own village's vests and forehead protectors?"
"After snatching the target, why stroll across the ground instead of vanishing through the canopy? Why could Konoha's reserve jinchuriki be taken from under a village with sentries in every shadow and no one came to help?"
Kushina's breath hitched. She had told herself she was a foreign nobody, not worth rescuing. Yet she was Konoha's spare vessel. How could it have been so easy? Why did no one come?
Konoha's barrier that never slept. The Byakugan. Mito's Kagura's Mind Eye that could cover the whole village. The ANBU and Root that never missed a breath. Where did they go?
How did a fresh graduate find her first? How did three Cloud jōnin die to a chūnin's kicks and a tossed kunai? It was a joke only a fool could accept.
Mo Ke straightened and laughed with his belly like the original fox. Kushina's chains loosened more.
"Follow the red hair, they said. Cute story. Even academy students erase their tracks when they run. Cloud jōnin forgot Shinobi 101?"
He half-squinted at Kushina, voice needling.
"There was a Cloud shinobi behind you the whole time. Was he blind to the fallen red hair?"
"Even if those three were idiots, Konoha's trackers are not. Byakugan. Sensory teams. Inuzuka hounds. How did you beat them all to Kushina, Minato?"
"Were the two of you whispering sweet nothings while Konoha watched from the trees? Were those three Cloud 'jōnin' lying on the ground pretending to be dead, choking back laughter so their Transformation did not fail and reveal Konoha forehead protectors?"
"Absurd. Yet that farce made Kushina feel a bond with Konoha."
Mo Ke slid his gaze to Minato and pressed the verdict.
"Even I, a beast without human love, can smell the rot."
"You, the man who surpassed the Sannin to become Fourth Hokage, the calm Golden Flash of the battlefield."
"You noticed too, didn't you?"
Minato's face twisted. He wanted to deny it, but the fact remained. He had been the first and only one to find her that night. Either it was a plot, or the village did not care. He could not bear to say either.
The fox kept pecking at his ears.
"To knit a bond with this red-haired outsider, you, raised by the Will of Fire and trained to think like a Hokage, chose to go along."
"Is it not neat? Lies filled Kushina's childhood. Now her death must be wrapped in lies as well."
"You truly love her."
Minato's hair bristled. "Enough. Do not defile my feelings. You are throwing baseless slander."
"Then refute me. Do not whine without an answer."
Mo Ke drew his last arrow.
"Kushina, there is something you do not know."
"When a beast breaks its seal, if you return a portion of its chakra to the host, the host lives."
"In the Cloud, the Eight-Tails can leave a tail behind and save its jinchuriki."
"One of my tails should work even better."
"You were Konoha's tool since childhood. Maybe you never learned this. But Minato, the Hokage, should know."
"Look at him. He is about to split me and seal me into a newborn and a dead reaper. Why not return a share to you and keep you alive?"
"Maybe your husband never trusted you. Maybe he feared that once he died, the last scion of Uzushio would become a danger to Konoha."
"Those not of my clan are suspect. A child with no parents is far easier to mold than a foreign kunoichi with roots elsewhere."
Kushina's face shadowed. She looked at Minato with shock and hurt. The chains rattled. Her eyes begged for an answer.
Minato's heart lurched. He had never heard this rule. He was the Hokage. Konoha created the jinchuriki system. Did the village know? Did Hiruzen know?
He wanted to reject every word. He loved his wife and child as he loved his village. He believed he would never harm them.
Yet what he knew of Konoha's upper floors since becoming Hokage filled him with doubt. He feared that except for his love, everything else the fox said might be true.
The man who weathered a thousand storms felt his heart fall into chaos.
And Mo Ke knew he had stolen the tempo.
He had lied by omission. The Eight-Tails trick belonged to the future. Minato likely did not know yet. Root's current orders were Danzo's, and Minato was ignorant. Kushina could not have known. None of that mattered. There was no time for Minato to think his way out.
"Do not swallow these lies. Kushina, trust me. I love you. I love our child. I love our village the same."
"I will never hurt you or our baby."
Minato's plea thinned under Kushina's bleeding stare.
He knew he should not believe the fox. He knew his love was true.
But in the pit of his stomach, looking up at the monolith called Konoha, he felt a cold idea bloom.
What if the fox was right?
What if only his love was pure, and everything else was conspiracy?
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