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Naruto woke up in a box.
The walls were so close that his first breath pushed his chest against the lid above him. He couldn't arch his back. Couldn't turn his head more than a fraction in either direction. His arms were pinned against his sides with barely enough room to flex his fingers. His legs were sealed in below the knee by the end of the box.
The darkness inside was strange.
A complete absence that pressed against his open eyes and confirmed itself the same whether they were open or shut.
He breathed in.
The air was stale and warm from his own exhales. Naruto was breathing the same finite supply cycling in and out. That cause something in him to abandon all pretense of calm. The darkness reminded him of the hell he went through.
The boy remembered his ribs bowing inward and the... stretching.
Breathe.
His hands came up and hit the lid inches above his face. He pushed with all his strength yet the lid didn't budge.
A headache caused naruto to stop. He felt dizzy and weak. His heartbeat was the only sound in the darkness.
Is this it?
Tears came before he decided to cry.
Is this what death is? Not pure lands or anything that anyone ever described. Just this; the last moment of dying, repeating forever.
The moment he thought it his body remembered the grinding wrongness of every direction at once.
He was so scared.
Naruto would rather prefer death to just be nothing rather this eternal hell.
He didn't know how long he was in that state. Minutes maybe. Hours possibly. Long enough that maintaining any kind of coherent thought was like keeping his head above water with hands that were getting tired.
NARUTO.
He went still at the sound.
Great, the boy thought. Now I'm hearing things.
Naruto. Follow my voice.
The voice itself was nothing he could place a face to. But the tone of those words carried warmth directed entirely at him. Maybe it was his mind playing tricks of him. But the boy moved toward it out of some blind hope.
Come on sweety, you can do it.
Suddenly the darkness began to break as fuinjutsu characters burned themselves into the abyss. They were bright gold, spreading outward from each crack.
Hands came through next as the lid gave way.
Naruto was being pulled upward into air.
The boy involuntarily took in a deep gulp of real air. Clean, cold and smelling of lavender. Before he could process any of it the boy felt warmth. A woman's arms wrapped around him holding him the way he had seen mothers hold their children in the markets.
The sense of safety caused Naruto to break into tears.
"It's okay," she said. Her voice was unsteady too, but it held. "You're okay. I have you. I have you."
He grabbed fistfuls of her hair and pressed his face against her shoulder and cried in a way he had never allowed himself to cry in front of anyone.
"I was so scared," he managed. "I didn't want to die. I didn't want to be in there forever. I was so scared."
"I know." Her hand moved in slow circles against his back. "I know. You're out now. You're safe."
"I don't want to go back in there."
"You won't." Her arms tightened around him. "I won't let you."
He believed her.
He didn't know why he believed her. He didn't know who she was, where this was or what any of it meant.
He cried as she held him until he couldn't cry no more.
"It's done."
Naruto blinked through what remained of his tears and looked back at the new voice.
The man standing was tall and lean with blonde spiky hair. A smile of someone genuinely glad to see you. He was wearing the white hokage coat with the flames at the hem.
"You're the Fourth Hokage, Dattebayo."
Minato frowned at not being recognized beyond that.
Naruto's brain caught up with the situation. "Wait... If I'm meeting the you here then I must be in the pure lands. Guesss, I died."
Kushina pinched both his cheeks with her fingers and pulled. "Sweetheart, you are alive."
"WHAT." Naruto grabbed her wrists. "Then did the Fourth Hokage fake his death?!"
Minato and Kushina sweatdropped at that conclusion.
"No, it's considerably more complicated than that. When I sealed the Nine Tails in you, I built in a safeguard. If the seal ever came close to breaking, our chakra imprints would activate to help stabilize it. I never hoped it would be necessary, but..."
Naruto stopped listening as one statement echoed in his head
I sealed the Nine Tails in you.
A dark look crossed his face as he punched Minato in the boingloings with everything a thirteen year old arm could produce.
Kushina bent her forward laughing so hard that she coughed.
"WHY," Naruto screamed, "would you put the Nine Tails inside me? I was a kid. I had no say in it. People hated me my whole life for something I had no control over. Do you know what that was like? Do you have any idea—"
"Naruto."
Kushina's arms came around him again, different from the desperate hold of a moment ago. Her hand combed through his hair.
"People can be very stupid," she said quietly. "They encounter something they don't understand and they react from fear before they think. Your father and I believed, that you were strong enough to endure what came with this. To be a shinobi is to endure." A pause. "We never imagined they would make it this hard."
Naruto was quiet for a moment inside her arms.
"D-Dad?" His voice came out very small. "The Fourth Hokage is my... pops?"
Minato had recovered enough to be standing again, one hand still resting carefully at his side.
"Naruto," Kushina asked slowly. "Did no one tell you about us?"
The boy shook his head.
She pressed her hand flat against her mouth for a moment, steadying herself.
"My name is Kushina Uzumaki," she said. "I am your mother, dattebane."
Naruto grabbed her and held on with both arms as tightly as he could manage.
He always wanted a mother.
Someone who coulf make him awesome stuff to eat. Someone who checked if he was pretending to be sick to not go to school. Someone who would show up to Academy tournaments, clap too loudly and embarrass him in front of everyone. He would pretend to mind but wouldn't actually. Someone who called him sweetheart and loved him like he was the best thing ever.
"How old are you?"
Naruto pulled back enough to glare at him over Kushina's shoulder. "Thirteen," he said. "And I'm still mad at you."
Minato nodded accepting the fair consequence.
"Did Jiraiya-sensei not tell you about us?" Kushina asked, still smoothing his hair.
"Why would Pervy Sage tell me about you?"
"Because he is my master," Minato said.
"I totally forgot Pervy Sage trained you. He trained me too."
Minato's face brightened. "Does that mean Jiraiya-sensei was looking after you growing up?"
"No," Naruto said with a confused look. "He taught me some stuff before the Chunin Exam finals. And then we went to get Granny Tsunade to be the Fifth Hokage."
Kushina turned to Minato with delight spreading across her face. "Did you hear that? Lady Tsunade is the Fifth Hokage."
Minato nodded quietly.
"I actually wanted to become Hokage myself once. Did you know that, Naruto? I had the dream before your father did."
"Really?"
"Of course. But I couldn't get on the candidate list, so..."
"She made sure I won the race for both of us. Without Kushina, I don't think I could've become the hokage."
Kushina's face went pink. Naruto looked between them and felt something strange settle in his chest. Was this what a family looked like?
"My dream is to become Hokage. I'm going to show everyone who ever looked at me like I was nothing that they were wrong."
Minato and Kushina both smiled yet wondered.
"What was your life like?"
Naruto was quiet for a moment.
"I was in the orphanage for the first five years," he said. "Don't really remember much from that. After that they gave me an apartment and enrolled me in the Academy. The Academy was fine. Kids avoided me because of their parents. Peoplr would glare when I walked past them in the street. It was... like everyone hated me for some reason. It was very lonely."
Kushina's arms tightened around him like a reflex. Making sure he could feel that he wasn't alone.
"So I started pulling pranks," he said, and the ghost of the smirk came back. "If they were going to pretend I wasn't there, I figured I'd make that a little harder. See if they could ignore me painting the Hokage monument."
Naruto looked down.
"Most of my Academy days were just goofing off and causing trouble."
A silence.
"I'm sorry." Kushina said it very quietly. "I should've been there. I should've been there to beat some manners into you."
Naruto froze.
"She's joking," Minato said, in the tone of a man managing multiple situations simultaneously. "She would never actually follow through on hurting her baby ."
"Minato. Don't sabotage my strategies."
"You don't have strategies. You have impulses you decide to commit to."
"That is what a strategy is."
Naruto chuckled at that. He seemed more like his mom than his dad.
"But son. If you had pushed through, if you had been the best student in your class despite everything, people would have had to acknowledge you on merit alone."
"..."
"Naruto—"
"I did try. But every time I asked a question the teachers would punish me for asking stupid questions. So I stopped. What was the point? The teacher were all stinky poopy babies except Iruka-sensei."
"..."
"What about the Third?"
"Jiji?" Naruto's face softened slightly. "He came around sometimes. Gave me an allowance. We had ramen together once a month."
"And?"
"I always looked forward to it. There wasn't much else to look forward to in an empty apartment."
"The Hokage job is really busy," Minato started carefully.
Kushina turned with a creaking sound.
Minato promptly shut his mouth.
"I have some strong words for that old man."
"Mom, don't be mad at Jiji. He was one of the only adults who didn't look at me like I was a problem."
"That," Kushina said. "is the bare minimum, Naruto. He was the Hokage. He was the adult responsible for making sure you grew up safe and cared for. And once a month visit and allowance is not that." Her jaw was set. "Next time I see him I'm going to beat his ass, dattebane."
"He's dead," Naruto said.
Kushina paused.
"The point stands," she said, quieter. "He didn't do enough. And I am going to hold him accountable for that regardless of what state he is currently in." She turned back to Naruto and her voice lost the edge. "You deserved better than what you were given. You understand that. None of it was what you deserved."
Naruto had heard a lot of things said about him. He had heard what he was and what he would never be. He had heard pity dressed up as kindness, disgust dressed up as discipline and indifference dressed up as fairness.
He had never heard that.
You deserved better.
He didn't know what to do with them.
Naruto could only nod.
"I'm sorry," Minato said. "Those years must have been very hard. I know an apology from me carries little weight. I don't have the right to stand here and play at being a father after putting you through all of that."
Naruto sniffed and rubbed his face with the back of his hand. "I'm fine. I'm the Hokage's kid after all."
Minato gave a sad smile.
"Why did you do it?"
Kushina gritted her teeth at the memory.
"Thirteen years ago, the Nine Tails attack didn't happen on its own. Someone with the strength and the ability to bend a tailed beast to their will, directed it at the village."
Naruto's eyes widened.
"I sealed the Nine Tails' power inside you because I believed the day would come when you would need it. When the world would need you to have it." Minato placed a hand on his son's head. "I needed you to be ready for what's coming."
"Is that even possible when I'm dead?"
"You aren't dead," Kushina reminded him.
"But I went through that black coffin thing."
"My theory," Minato said, "is that a spatial phenomenon occurred as a result of the summoning jutsu, the Kyubi's chakra, and natural energy interacting simultaneously at the point of—"
Naruto and Kushina looked at him as if he had grown a second head.
"Any idea what he just said?"
"Nope."
Minato sighed. "The jutsu went wrong. The interaction between the Flying Thunder God and the space-time cocktail teleported you to a safe location."
"Okay." Naruto looked around at the flower field. "So where am I?"
"Your mindscape," Kushina said. "Your body is being taken care of by a monk who healed you."
Naruto's legs dissolved below the knee.
"Ahh—"
"You're just waking up," Minato said. "Just breathe."
Naruto looked at both of them, and something desperate moved across his face.
"Please tell me this isn't a dream," he said. "Mom. Dad. Tell me this is real."
"It's real," Kushina said.
"But what happens when I want to tell you about something. About a prank I pulled. When I need advice." Naruto looked at his hands, which were also starting to fade. "What happens when I just want to talk to you?"
"We are always with you," Kushina said.
"Always," Minato said.
Naruto opened his mouth to say something else but he was gone.
The flower field dissolved.
Kushina and Minato's human forms shed like a second skin. The mindscape revealed the sewer corridor of Naruto's inner world stretched in every direction. The walls cracked, the pipes burst and the water running dark. Chains covered every surface in dense overlapping coils, fuinjutsu talismans burning against the metal where they held. The Kyuubi's prison sat at the far end, damaged but contained.
Barely.
"Will he be alright?" Kushina's cursed form turned slowly. "After what he went through in that space. I don't think anything comes out of that the same."
"I managed to seal the memory of worst of it," Minato said. "That should allow him to function like a normal human without the mindbreaking trauma of the experience. "
Kushina nodded. "Now, onto the important things."
The space phenomenon had destroyed a significant portion of Naruto's body and fractured the Eight Trigrams Sealing Style in the process. Despite weakening from the incident, the Kyuubi could break free if it chose to. The only thing preventing that was the two of them holding the broken edges of the seal together by force.
"How long do you think it will take to reseal the Kyuubi?" Kushina asked. T
The sooner it was done, the sooner she could actually be present for her son.
"It's going to fight us every step of the way," Minato said. "We aren't operating at the strength of our human bodies. We have to reforge the Eight Trigrams Sealing Style with CE. We have to be careful enough that the Kyubi can't sabotage the work while it's incomplete." He paused. "Two years at Minimum."
"That's too long, Minato."
"If we make a single mistake, the kyuubi escapes and his life is over." He said it quietly, without softening it. "Two years will pass. After that we can actually raise our son the way he deserves."
Kushina's expression didn't settle.
"What is it?"
"When he sees what we look like now." She looked down at her cursed form. "I'm worried he won't accept us."
"Kushina." Minato moved to her side. "You are the most beautiful woman I have ever known... in any form. He'll be frightened at first, yes. But that boy held onto you for dear life in a flower field after surviving a collapsing void. He isn't going to let something like this keep him away from his mother."
"..."
"He'll come around. I know he will."
Kushina held his gaze for a moment. Then she exhaled and turned toward the broken seal.
"Then let's do what parents are supposed to do," she said.
"Protect our kid," Minato agreed.
They got to work.
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Author Note: Q&A Time.
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Random reader 44 asks: Why does Minato ask Naruto questions as if he has never met him before, despite supposedly watching everything that happened to Naruto from his birth up until his fight with Sasuke?
Yeah that's not canon.
In chapter 440, Minato questions why Hiruzen never told him much about Naruto. Again in chapter 440, Minato asks how old Naruto is.
Basically these examples show that Minato wasn't exactly watching everything that happened to Naruto from his birth to the Valley of the End.
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Random reader 44 asks:. Why do Minato and Kushina need two years to repair Naruto's seal when Minato was able to repair it within seconds in the manga?
Okay, so you are correct that Minato instantly rebuilt the seal in chapter 440 of the manga.
Here is why cursed Minato and Kushina can't instantly seal away Kurama.
1- They now have CE.
2- The damage to Naruto's seal was so much worse than canon. Unlike canon where Kurama broke the seals, this time Naruto's body was damaged alongside the seal to the point where the remaining seal is a mess rather than cleanly broken.
3- Kushina and Minato have to break and remake the seal while actively suppressing Kurama from killing their son. They have to revise the entire system of Fuinjutsu with CE rather than chakra.
4- Kurama is actively trying to get out so they have to make sure he isn't going to interfere with anything. They also have to make sure Kurama doesn't try to interfere with Naruto's mind and body.
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Random reader 44 asks: Is the reason the seal takes two years to repair related to the story taking place two years before the beginning of the anime?
Yes. The seal could take a month or two if I wanted it to. But I need Kushina and Minato to be busy because those two genuinely break up a lot of the plot. Like Naruto is fighting a Special Grade curse and Minato and Kushina come to the rescue.
Don't worry, I didn't write Kushina and Minato out of the story. There is a massive amount of plot planned with them and Naruto. Naruto will learn a lot from them. I just don't want them to be helicopter parents that are too overprotective of Naruto. Naruto needs to grow on his own in the jjk verse. Hence why all the in universe reasons exist as to why they don't instantly reseal Kurama.
Now it is up to you to like or dislike that plot beat. But don't worry, there is a lot I have planned between the three of them.
Also let me know what you guys think Naruto should learn from cursed Minato and Kushina?
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That's It… For Now.
I want to thank you all for taking the time to read, comment, and follow along with this story. Your feedback means more than you know, and it helps push me to make each chapter bigger, sharper, and more true to the worlds of Naruto and Jujutsu Kaisen.
And if you can't wait for the next update, the next chapter drops on August 22th! You can read ahead to Chapter 16 on Patreon or come join me on discord
Until next time,
With this treasure, I summon...
-Adam-