"'Taking flight'... means doing something positive and uplifting," Makoto lied smoothly.
"Positive and uplifting? But Naruto has always been positive and uplifting, hasn't he?" Kushina asked, tilting her head in total innocence.
That was true.
Makoto thought to himself that this was the kind of situation vastly better left unexplained.
Earlier, when he'd been manually applying Rin's anatomical "formatting," he could at least justify it by claiming medical ninjas didn't distinguish between men and women.
But if he explained this specific technique out loud to a mother, things would get genuinely weird.
"Naruto already made peace with the Nine-Tails a while ago, but he still hasn't mastered the Tailed Beast Bomb. That is simply a matter of technique," Makoto said, abruptly changing the subject.
Kushina froze for a moment, then immediately understood the weight of his words.
After she had first been brought back via the Edo Tensei, she hadn't gone to see Naruto right away.
At first, it was because she simply wasn't mentally prepared to face her son.
Later, it was because she was terrified that if they made contact, the fragmented memories between the Yin and Yang halves of Kurama might synchronize and severely interfere with Naruto's growth.
Makoto was now telling her that Naruto had already fully reconciled with the Nine-Tails, which meant it was finally safe for her to go see him.
At the same time, he was implicitly telling her what "taking flight" meant—if she went and saw it for herself, she would understand.
"All right then. Rin, go with the Director and get a thorough checkup, then get some rest. I'll go with Makoto."
After a brief hesitation, Kushina made up her mind. She couldn't keep avoiding this forever.
Makoto and Kushina located one of the covert Flying Thunder God operators and teleported directly to the desolate desert outside the Sand Village.
To observe Naruto safely, the two of them didn't choose to appear on the ground.
Makoto took Kushina up into the air, hovering high above Naruto's location, cloaked by the clouds.
Looking down from the high altitude, there were huge numbers of Shadow Clones scattered across the dunes around the original Naruto.
In order to maintain absolute vigilance against the time-skipping ability, every single Shadow Clone was forced to start the process of "taking flight," only to abruptly stop right before the climax, and then switch with another clone.
The reasoning was simple.
If he wanted to maintain a sharp sensory trap, he couldn't actually finish the 'flight'.
He had to remain perpetually trapped in the rising process.
Once he completely took off, he could gather the natural energy to enter Sage Mode—but the glaring problem was that the "takeoff technique" would also enter a strict biological cooldown period.
During that refractory interval, he would have a fatal opening and a massive weakness.
If Makoto chose to take advantage of that post-flight gap, Naruto would have absolutely no chance to counter.
What's more, of his three given chances, only the final one remained.
There was zero room for error. Naruto could only maintain a terrifying, twelve-parts vigilance.
But as the hours dragged on, every additional Shadow Clone spawned on the field meant that Naruto had gone through yet another frustrating, interrupted masturbation.
An entire day passed.
Naruto's original body hadn't actually done anything physical except passively supply chakra to maintain the Shadow Clones, but the sheer mental toll had left him exhausted, so he chose to catch some sleep on a nearby dune.
The older Shadow Clones were assigned to keep watch through the night, while the newest clone was right in the middle of taking flight, maintaining high alert against Time Deletion.
"What exactly is he doing down there?" Kushina asked, looking at Makoto in utter confusion.
There were far too many Shadow Clones moving erratically below, and they were still a bit too high up, so she hadn't noticed what the special clone was doing with his hands right away.
Makoto had just been about to point it out to her when he suddenly foresaw a few horrifying scenes through his Epitaph and immediately changed his mind.
"No rush. You'll know in a moment."
...
Down below—
One of Naruto's exhausted Shadow Clones complained bitterly, "Why does he get to sleep in comfort while we have to stand out here and suffer for him?!"
"Yeah! Why does he get to masturbate comfortably in his dreams, but we always have to abruptly stop right at the very end?!" Another clone looked equally furious, his hands trembling.
"Actually, he has his own difficulties. As the original body—"
"And what exactly did he ever give you, huh?! Why are you always speaking up for him?! Is he your God or something?!" One clone tried to reasonably defend Naruto, only to be angrily shouted down by the mob.
"Guys! If you can still tolerate him sleeping here however he pleases while we endure this torture, then allow me to self-destruct right now!" One overly dramatic Shadow Clone pulled out a kunai and pointed it at his own neck.
"Ma boi, don't be rash! If we're going to disappear and give him all this pent-up frustration anyway, we might as well get some payback before we do!"
"YEAH! Does the original body think he was a god or something?! Is he born better than us?! BEAT HIS ASS!"
"No, wait, we should—"
Naruto's Shadow Clones began planning a full-scale revolution centered around the philosophical ideas of: Is the original body born better than us? and If we're going to die anyway, why not go down in rebellion?!
...
"AH?! What on earth are his clones doing?!"
Watching the movements of Naruto's Shadow Clones below, Kushina grabbed her head in sheer horror.
Even though the distance was too great for her to make out all the details clearly, she had already guessed what the clones had done.
Under the original body's strict orders, the clones had been expressly forbidden from ejaculating and it had been pure, unadulterated torture!
Now that they had decided to revolt, naturally they would messed with him.
So, the Shadow Clones completely defied Naruto's orders and began forcibly ejaculating.
Very quickly, the clones completed their grueling task.
In his sleep, Naruto dreamed that Konoha was holding a massive water-splashing festival, and he and Kiba were happily fighting each other with giant water guns.
Then, he suddenly woke up.
He found himself tightly pinned down in the sand by his own Shadow Clones.
One of them was still doing something highly questionable, and when it saw him wake up, it spoke with a face full of deep resentment.
"So you didn't want to cum, huh?! Well, we all jerking off—AND NOW YOU'RE CUMMING TOO!"
"HUH?!"
Naruto had never expected that maintaining Shadow Clones for too long and tormenting them with this specific task would actually drive them into a full-blown rebellion!
He struggled frantically, trying to forcefully dispel the clones.
But he failed.
The clones that had completed their masturbation had all successfully absorbed natural energy and entered Sage Mode.
Their collective strength was far beyond what his sleepy, baseline body could match!
Five minutes later—
Poof! Poof! Poof! Poof!
All the Shadow Clones vanished into smoke.
Naruto lay spread-eagle on the desert ground in sheer, utter despair, entirely powerless.
All of the fragmented memories and all of the overwhelming, explosive fatigue flooded into his mind at once.
But the good news was that some of the 'physical things' the Shadow Clones had left on his body disappeared with the smoke too.
No cleanup needed.
"Kurama... why didn't you save me?" Naruto sadly demanded of the giant fox inside his mindscape, a single tear tracking through the dirt on his cheek.
If Kurama had just lent him a tiny bit of power, then with the strength of the Nine-Tails Chakra Mode, breaking free from a few Sage Mode clones would have been incredibly easy.
[Idiot. Don't forget, your Shadow Clones also carry my power inside them. If I lent you power, why wouldn't they just borrow it too?]
Although Kurama had deliberately chosen not to help because he found the entire situation completely mortifying, his excuse still sounded perfectly logical and self-righteous.
"Someone's there?!"
Naruto, still lying paralyzed in the sand, had just started to complain when he suddenly became alert and snapped his gaze to the side.
Makoto had already thrown Kushina down from the sky.
Kushina landed softly, looking down at Naruto with an incredibly complex, horrified expression.
For a long moment, she simply didn't know what to say.
"Who are you?!"
Although Naruto had been forcibly made to cum by his clones, he had also absorbed their natural energy and entered Sage Mode because of it.
Realizing that the person who dropped from the sky wasn't Makoto but a red-haired stranger, he immediately became highly suspicious.
"I am your mother," Kushina answered decisively, without the slightest hesitation.
"?!"
Naruto's toad-like pupils shook violently.
He hurriedly covered his ass with both hands and stumbled several steps backward, desperately opening up some distance.
He still vividly remembered that the last time an enemy had started a fight with the line "I am your father," Kimimaro had immediately turned around and hit him with a Ten-Finger Drilling Bullet: One Thousand Years of Death—with a literal, spinning bone drill!
---
Damn..... can understand why the clones rebel tho, imagine you were told to masturbate but at the same time you're forbidden to cum and need to redo it over and over again!