Kushina Uzumaki burst free like a storm breaking glass.
Tricked by Minato's "perfect" arrangement and sealed for three long years like the Nine Tails itself, she arrived furious, ready to pummel the fox just to vent the ache in her bones. She braced to swing and instead found a tiny boy with sun blond hair and six whisker marks staring up at her. The switch in her face did not even have time to load.
The boy flailed, slipped, and fell. Kushina snorted a laugh despite herself, flashed beneath him, and caught him in her arms.
He was safe, yet he stayed stiff and trembling, eyes squeezed shut, waiting for the pain that never came.
Kushina did not rush him. She simply held the child and looked. Three years without this face. His lines were softer than Minato's, less sharply handsome, yet already a rare little heartbreaker.
His eyes would be blue, she knew, a shade between Minato's pale calm and her own deep tone. That part stung. He had not even kept her hair. No red. Only gold.
Jealous. And so happy she could barely breathe.
She wanted to keep looking forever.
He wriggled and broke her spell. The first thing he did with his eyes open was squirm free. It hurt a little. Then he pointed at her, mouth working, shock chasing words around his tongue.
"You are Naruto, right."
He jumped. "Who are you. Why are you in my belly."
Kushina's eyes went dark for a heartbeat. So Konoha truly had told him nothing. Just as the Nine Tails hinted.
Debts could wait. She tapped her lip, a sly smile pushing the storm clouds back. "So this is your belly. Then guess who I am."
Naruto squinted, one arm folded, one hand rubbing his chin, clearly thinking very hard. His gaze locked on the red hair. His eyes lit. He smacked fist to palm.
"I know. In the village only Dad has red hair. You must be Dad. Dad, why did you turn into a woman. You scared me."
Kushina blinked. The laugh started small and grew until she bent at the waist, shoulders shaking.
"You still laugh so rudely, Dad. Even when you turn into a woman."
The "rude" earned him a bonk. Her fist thumped his head. His eyes rolled and he yelped. "Not at all, dattebane. I am not your dad. I am your mom. And how can a son call his mother rude."
Naruto clutched his head, tears smarting, then froze on a single word. "Dattebane."
Kushina scratched her cheek, sheepish. "I got excited. I talk fast and my temper runs hot, so out it comes. A silly verbal tick. I try to hold it in, but when I get worked up it leaks. You are fine, right. You did not pick up something weird like your mom."
"Don't lie. My mom's hair is yellow."
"Yellow. Why would you think that. And how do you know your parents' hair colors."
So the Third had not told him. Then where did this idea come from. A misunderstanding from scraps.
Naruto puffed his cheeks and barked back. "You are lying. I lived with Dad a long time. He has red hair. I have yellow hair. Red plus red cannot make yellow. So my mom must have yellow hair, dattebayo."
More blinking. She missed the tick entirely this time, snagged by the rest. "Wait. You said you lived with Minato. Also did you say Minato has red hair."
"What are you talking about, weird lady. What Minato, what gate. My dad is Mo Ke. Uzumaki Mo Ke. He is that guy over there."
Kushina followed his finger to the bed.
A red haired man lay on his back in a black kimono over a white lining. Handsome, but not Minato. The name Mo Ke rang in her mind with a sting. Three years locked beside the yin half of the Nine Tails had taught her that name very well.
She looked again with care. Once was enough to feel it. Twice made it certain. This was the yang Nine Tails. Her gut said the same thing her eyes did.
Her face went flat. She smoothed it anyway, led Naruto to sit, and gently tugged the whole story out of him, month by month.
As he spoke, her hair slowly lifted, strand by strand, and the air grew heavy.
…
In the deep center of the seal, Mo Ke fought two tides.
Chakra and spirit refused to marry. One moved like a river in flood. The other was a black sea at midnight. When he poured them together they canceled or repelled. A thousand ratios. A thousand failures.
Nine Tails chakra was not ordinary chakra. It carried a snarl of negative emotion. That changed its nature. He could sand the edges off those feelings and make it easier. He did not want to. The snarl was useful. It hit harder. It could not be simply absorbed. Even Nagato with Rinnegan had thought twice about drawing in too much of that fire. Later, once the fox made peace and lost its malice, he and the Eight Tails together were slurped down like soup, and Nagato even reversed age on the spot.
He needed a buffer. A bridge between serenity and storm. He tried Armament, then Conqueror's Haki.
The surprise came fast. The Conqueror's he had barely trained slid between the currents and calmed both. Haki of kings was soul power at heart, like spirit, yet it answered emotion like chakra. It was born to stand in the seam.
Perhaps his ambition always reached far. Three Thousand Worlds was the name his blade brought from birth. It made sense that the will that coated a king would be strong in him as well.
He tested again and again until a new power blazed in his core. Scarlet, laced with flickers of black lightning, it pulsed like a second heart.
Success. That state rewrote him the moment he touched it. Mind and flesh both climbed a step beyond their frames.
He knew it in his bones. If he learned to hold this power easily he would break into A rank. If he learned to convert every part of his energy into this nature and keep it as his normal shape, he would not merely climb. He would leap.
He named it simply. The Scarlet Power. The Scarlet Body.
Then he drew a breath, ready to end seclusion. "Ten days already. That kid better not be living on ramen again."
His eyes narrowed. A warning flared. The outer split had tasted danger.
And it was close.
______________________________
If you're enjoying this story and want to read more advanced chapters, you can support me on Patreon: patreon.com/PurgatorialPoet. Your support helps keep the translations coming faster.