Uchiha Obito's hands closed around the Anbu's throat and held there.
The man struggled. He was trained for this, which meant he fought correctly: no wasted motion, targeted strikes at the grip, trying to break the position rather than simply pulling away. None of it produced the sound he needed to produce. The hands held.
Two bodies in the same uniform were already on the ground nearby.
It took longer than people expected, which was what Obito had been told. He held on through all of it, through the struggle becoming less coordinated and then becoming almost nothing and then becoming nothing at all. When the body went still and the arms fell, he released his grip slowly and stood over the man he'd just killed.
Three Anbu of Konoha.
He'd planned this. He'd rehearsed it in his head. He'd built the rationale across months of living inside a grief he'd chosen to turn into something else. He knew what tonight was for. He'd been certain about it.
He looked at the three bodies and understood that everything preceding this moment had been preparation. This was the moment itself. He had crossed it. He was on the other side now, and the other side was permanent in a way that the preparation had only described without conveying.
There was no Kushina to protect. There was no Minato to admire. Those were things that had belonged to someone who had been him once, and that someone was behind him now, on the other side of three deaths.
Uchiha Obito looked at the barrier gate.
He walked through it.
Inside the cave, Kushina was working.
That was how Biwako Sarutobi would have described it to anyone who asked: Kushina was working. She had an opinion about the word "pain," which was that it was inadequate for what was happening in her body and also that it was a waste of attention to spend time on, so she had set it aside as much as a person could set aside something that large and was working.
The sweat was coming off her in a way that left her hair dark against the pillow, the strands plastered flat against her forehead and cheeks. Her grip on Minato's hand had passed the point where normal hands could have maintained the position.
Minato Namikaze was not known for shaking. He had stood in combat situations that had ended careers and demonstrated, to people who needed demonstrating, that the phrase "steady hands" was a physical description rather than a metaphor. His arms, at this moment, were shaking.
He hadn't noticed until Biwako looked at him.
"You are the Fourth Hokage of Konoha," she said, with the tone of someone who had delivered several hundred children and dealt with nervous partners for all of them. "Please try to look like it. You're making me anxious." She was not actually anxious. She did not get anxious in delivery situations. But redirecting nervous fathers was part of the work. "Get your hand on the seal and keep it stable. The Nine-Tails is feeling this."
Minato's other hand went to Kushina's stomach, where the inscriptions of the sealing technique were barely visible through her skin. He could feel it through his palm: the chakra of the Nine-Tails pressing against the boundaries of the seal, responding to Kushina's physical stress, finding the looseness that childbirth produced and testing it. He reinforced the edges. He held it.
To relieve her own tension, or perhaps because she had learned long ago that tension in the room transferred directly to the mother, Biwako continued talking. "If men had to do this," she said, without looking up from what she was doing, "the human race would have ended three generations after it started. Women are considerably stronger than they're generally credited for being." She paused. "The head is coming."
Something happened in Kushina at the words. The part of her that had been running on endurance alone, past the point where endurance normally ran out, found something further down and pulled on it.
"Kushina, push."
"Ah—"
The sound that came out of Kushina was less a word than a force.
Inside his own head, Minato was conducting two conversations simultaneously: one with himself about the seal, which he was reinforcing with sustained careful attention; and one with Naruto, who didn't exist yet but who he was already talking to.
Come out quickly, he thought. Your mother is in pain.
And to the Nine-Tails, in a very different register: please don't.
The second thought made Kushina laugh.
It was involuntary and entirely inappropriate, a genuine laugh punching through the effort, and it broke her concentration at the critical moment and made her body suddenly, briefly, entirely cooperative with the process rather than fighting it.
Biwako had delivered enough children to recognize the exact moment when a body stopped resisting and started helping, and she was ready for it.
Uzumaki Naruto arrived in the world in that half-second of his mother's laughter.
He was bald. He was loud. He had whisker-like marks on his cheeks that nobody commented on immediately because everyone in the cave was occupied with other thoughts. The medical ninja moved with professional speed, cutting and cleaning while Biwako held the child with the particular care of someone who had done this many times and never once treated it as routine.
Minato's expression went through several things rapidly and then got stuck somewhere between confused and overwhelmed.
"Is it..." He looked at Kushina, then at the baby, then at his hands, as if checking whether his hands had been responsible.
Biwako walked past him. "Let the mother see first," she said, without stopping.
She set Naruto beside Kushina's head. He was still crying, the loud unambiguous crying of someone new to having a respiratory system and finding it both useful and startling.
Kushina turned her head, and the exhaustion in her face reorganized itself around something that was not exhaustion at all.
"Naruto," she said. Her voice was almost nothing, barely above her own breathing. "I finally see you."
Minato looked at both of them and arrived, slowly, at a thought.
"I'm a father," he said. The words had the quality of something he'd known was coming and still found remarkable. "As of right now. I'm a father."
Biwako was already moving toward the door with the child. "We need to get him to a proper facility. The hospital has everything necessary. He'll be better off there than in a cave." She glanced back. "Kushina stays here until dawn, until the seal is re-reinforced. That was the plan."
Minato reached for Kushina's hand and found it. Her fingers closed around his, weaker than before.
"How are you feeling," he said, and then, before she could answer: "Thank you."
Kushina said his name the way you say the name of someone you trust completely.
Minato held her hand and was about to say something about the seal, about the Nine-Tails, about what the next several hours needed to look like, and the word "seal" was forming on his lips.
Two sounds came from the direction of the door. Not loud. The particular sound of people who are trained not to make sounds when they fall.
Minato's eyes went cold the moment he heard it.
He was already moving when Biwako came back through the door, moving backward, a kunai embedded in her chest, the baby no longer in her arms. The medical ninja came through behind her and did not get up again.
Biwako hit the floor. The word she was trying to form was: Naruto.
A figure walked through the door holding the baby.
Minato Namikaze looked at it.
"Who are you," he said. The words were very controlled. "Give him back."
The figure looked at the child in its arms. Whatever the mask concealed, the pause suggested something was happening behind it.
"Naruto," the figure said, quietly. "That's his name."
Then it looked up. One hand raised, pointing at the child's head.
"Fourth Hokage." The voice had stripped out everything except what was functional. "Leave the Jinchuriki. If you don't, this child won't survive the next five minutes."
"Listen to me," Minato said, and something moved in his eyes. "Stay calm. We can—"
"I'm calm. You should be."
Kushina's voice came from behind him, weak and angry and frightened at once.
"Naruto. Minato."
The figure moved. It threw Naruto upward, high, and in the same motion a kunai appeared and oriented toward the falling trajectory. The calculation was simple: Namikaze Minato would have to choose between defending Kushina and catching the child.
Minato was not there when the kunai would have connected. He was somewhere in the space above the figure's head, and then he was on the far side of the room, and Naruto was in his arms.
"As expected," said the figure. Something in the voice that was almost respect, or the memory of respect. "The Yellow Flash."
Minato looked down.
Small explosive tags had been applied to Naruto's clothing while he was in the air. He had perhaps three seconds.
He used one of them to say Naruto's name quietly, then used Flying Thunder God.
The cave was empty of him.
The figure walked toward Kushina.
She looked at it with eyes that were exhausted and in pain and not confused at all about what was happening. The anger in them was real. Underneath the anger was something else, something that recognized something it didn't want to recognize.
The figure looked at her for a moment that was longer than the situation required. Then it looked away.
It took her arm. Kamui opened. They were gone.
Sarutobi Shinnosuke came through the entrance at a run thirty seconds later, his hand already on a weapon, his body already positioned for the fight that the trace-marks on his arm had told him was happening. He cleared the entrance and read the room in a single sweep and understood that whatever had been happening was over.
His mother was on the floor.
Everything else in the room stopped registering.
He was down beside her before he had finished thinking about it, his hands finding her shoulders, his palm going to her neck for a pulse. It was there. Weak. The kunai in her chest was still in place, which was the correct state; you didn't remove a blade that had punctured the chest. She was breathing in short, shallow movements.
"Mom," he said.
She didn't answer. Her lips moved.
He looked at the medical ninja. He looked for long enough to know that there was nothing to be done there.
The medic team. He needed to reach the medic team. He could feel the anger in him, the specific hot anger of someone who has arrived too late and is looking at what that means, and he set it aside the way he set everything aside that wasn't immediately useful.
He gathered his mother carefully, confirmed the spine was not compromised, lifted her.
"Bastard," he said, once, very quietly, because once was enough.
Then he ran.
In a house elsewhere in Konoha, Minato set Naruto down. The explosive tags were gone, neutralized in transit by a marker-swap he'd executed between the cave and home. Naruto was unhurt and was crying in the way of someone who had been cold and startled and wanted to make sure everyone knew about it.
Minato looked at him for a moment. The warmth and the relief and the simple enormous fact of him were present in Minato's expression for approximately the duration of a breath.
He walked to the wall and took down the cloak.
The Fourth Hokage's cloak. White with flame patterns at the hem. He'd worn it into things before and he knew what putting it on meant in practical terms.
"Naruto," he said, to the crying baby. His voice was very gentle. "Wait for me. I'll be back."
He turned.
The gentleness left his face completely.