[Naruto, use the power of that stinky tanuki and that stupid octopus already! HURRY! She is about to start regenerating!]
The very instant Kurama saw Naruto's Super Great Ball Rasengan blast Kushina's Edo Tensei body into ash, it immediately shouted the tactical order.
"Huh?"
"What stinky cat and smelly fish…? Kurama, why didn't you say so earlier?" Naruto asked, still frozen in his dramatic post-Rasengan pose, a bit slow to process the command.
[If I had told you to use my chakra earlier, wouldn't you have accidentally attacked with malice again and ruined the feint?]
"Yeah, I guess so."
[The 'stinky tanuki' is the One-Tail, and the 'stupid octopus' is the Eight-Tails! Those two left a fraction of their power inside your body back during then. In every other combat metric, they are nowhere near as great as I am, but when it comes to sealing techniques—the sort of parlor tricks weaklings rely on to survive—they do have a little bit of skill.]
[Hurry up and use their unique power to seal up this inherently evil, red-haired monster woman! Otherwise, once she finishes regenerating from the ash, she'll just start fighting you again!]
The situation was artificially "urgent," so Kurama didn't waste time and went straight into firmly instructing Naruto.
The fox knew perfectly well that what it was doing could be exposed as a lie at any given moment.
But it didn't give a shit.
You could even say exposure was exactly what it wanted!
This was killing two birds with one stone.
If it didn't get exposed, then it could freely keep manipulating the idiot blonde and use him to repeatedly beat up Kushina in revenge for the past!
If it did get exposed, then Naruto would develop a massive rift with it and there would be no need to worry about the Great Toad Sage's terrifying marriage prophecy anymore!
A perfect, flawless plan!
'As expected of the legendary me—i truly was the smartest and the strongest of all the Tailed Beasts to think up such a brilliant solution on the fly!'
"Alright! I'll try…"
Naruto called over two Shadow Clones to help and tried to forcibly mold a "specialty Rasengan."
But he failed almost immediately.
The Rasengan had been developed by the Fourth Hokage based on the principles of the Tailed Beast Bomb.
If Naruto had already fully mastered the Rasenshuriken and then gone on to master the true Tailed Beast Bomb, the other nature-transformation Rasengan variations would have come naturally, and he would have learned them easily.
But the current Naruto hadn't even developed the Rasenshuriken yet.
He still couldn't even infuse basic Wind Release chakra into a standard Rasengan without clones, let alone seamlessly combine the One-Tail's volatile Magnet Release or the Eight-Tails' heavy ink into a condensed sphere.
With no other choice, Naruto had to settle for the next best thing.
He completely gave up on using a Rasengan and decided to just spray the sealing material directly.
A Shadow Clone walked over and once again hoisted Naruto's real body onto its shoulder like a heavy weapon.
Naruto adjusted his asshole aim and mentally switched his "ammunition."
Pffft—!
A massive, pressurized stream of thick, black octopus ink sprayed out, splattering heavily toward Kushina's pile of ash, which was still in the middle of regenerating and completely unable to dodge.
"That's enough. We'll stop here."
A calm voice rang out across the dunes.
By the time the heavy ink had finished spraying, Naruto was once again awkwardly tugging up his orange waistband.
He looked over and saw that right where the black ink had landed, a massive, thick wall of solid trees had erupted from the sand, with plenty of fresh green branches and leaves growing from the top to form a perfect canopy.
'What was this? Wood Release?! And that voice just now sounded extremely familiar.'
"Makoto-nii?" Naruto scratched his head in confusion.
But the thick wooden wall was completely blocking his view, so he still couldn't be entirely sure.
He started preparing to run around the wall to take a look.
At that exact moment, Kurama fell entirely silent inside the seal.
It understood that since Makoto had intervened, its brilliant, revenge-fueled plan was officially over.
Fortunately, it was smart enough that even this abrupt interruption was still factored into its calculations.
It was just a little regrettable—it hadn't had nearly enough fun making the kid shoot his own mom yet!
...
Meanwhile, on the other side of the wall...
The one who had intervened really was Makoto.
He simply stepped down onto the desert with one foot, casually activating Gold Experience's genesis ability.
The dead sand beneath his boot transformed into rapidly growing trees, forming a sturdy wooden wall that perfectly blocked the flying ink.
Makoto had no desire to let that stuff touch him.
Even if this was just octopus ink and not the highly flammable "toad oil" from earlier, just thinking about the specific source it had been fired from was enough to make his stomach churn in disgust.
"Thanks," Kushina breathed.
Her Edo Tensei body had almost fully regenerated from the ash.
She let out a heavy sigh of relief and thanked Makoto. She really ought to have felt proud that her son had such a creative, endless stream of combat tricks.
The glaring problem was that all of those disgusting tricks were currently being used on her, which made his genius rather hard to appreciate!
Thankfully, Makoto had stepped in.
Otherwise, who knew what vile substance she would have had to endure next if this kept going?
"Uh…"
"Hm?"
Seeing Makoto's expression suddenly turn a little strange, Kushina grew puzzled and slowly glanced down at herself.
As everyone knows, when apologizing or expressing sincere gratitude, you have to show proper sincerity.
But what Makoto hadn't expected was that apparently, thanking someone involved "showing" quite a few other things too.
Well, to be fair to Kushina, she obviously wasn't doing it on purpose.
It was simply the unfortunate mechanics of how the Impure World Reincarnation worked.
In the original story, when Naruto and Killer B finally figured out the secret of the masked man's Six Paths Jinchūriki, they did it by attacking the reanimated Yugito.
During the brief interval while her ash body was actively regenerating—but before her fake, dirt-woven clothes had fully recovered—Killer B managed to spot the exact location of the black receiver rods embedded in her flesh.
Likewise, there was the classic, horrifying moment where Madara Uchiha proudly displayed the "husbando in his heart."
Madara intentionally let himself get hit by Ōnoki's devastating Dust Release, causing half of his reanimated torso to be blown into dust.
As that missing half slowly regenerated from the inside out, Madara smugly turned around before his armor and clothes had finished restoring, proudly showing the Five Kage the face of Hashirama Senju grafted directly onto his bare chest.
In other words, after an Edo Tensei vessel was blown completely apart, it really did regenerate strictly from the inside out.
Flesh first, clothing last.
So, during Kushina's current regeneration process…
Things were very awkward.
Kushina felt like her brain was about to physically explode from embarrassment.
Just a moment ago in the lab, she had still been frantically debating whether she should give Makoto a proper, "censored" anatomical reference in order to let him revive her.
Now, there was absolutely no need to even think about it anymore.
He had already seen everything!
Seeing it again in a sterile lab wouldn't make much difference now.
'This is ALL Naruto's fault!'
Gritting her teeth so hard they nearly cracked, Kushina was so incredibly furious that if she didn't violently beat Naruto up right this second, there was no way she could safely vent the burning anger in her heart.
A few seconds after Kushina's clothes had finally finished regenerating, Naruto climbed up the side of the wooden wall and jumped down from the canopy.
"Makoto-nii! It really is you! Was this ev—uh, this red-haired woman someone you brought here to test me?" Naruto walked over with a highly curious look on his face.
He still hadn't given up on the bet.
He was patiently waiting for a moment when Makoto wasn't paying attention so he could tag his forehead and win the match.
"She is your mother," Makoto stated simply.
"?"
Naruto, who had just been about to make his move, froze completely on the spot.
His jaw dropped.
'She really is my mom?! That bad—woman hadn't lied to me?!'
Tap.
Makoto casually flicked Naruto on his metal forehead protector, and Naruto officially lost the match.
But at this point, the blonde boy no longer cared about winning or losing the bet.
His chaotic mind was overflowing with the horrific implications of everything that had happened over the past hour!
There was absolutely no reason for Makoto to lie to him now.
If the craz-red-haired woman in front of him really was his mother... then didn't that mean that the blonde man in the mental space earlier—the one who had proudly claimed to be his father—really was his father?!
Wait... then was Kimimaro his dad or not?!
Naruto felt a massive migraine coming on.
He couldn't tell anymore.
He really couldn't!
Forget it. Better to just ask directly!
Naruto cautiously stepped forward and started asking Makoto a rapid-fire series of questions for confirmation.
Makoto patiently answered each ridiculous question one by one.
Off to the side, Kushina tilted her head back and gave a long, exhausted sigh toward the desert sky.
As his own flesh-and-blood mother, Naruto hadn't believed a single word she had said.
He had even fought her and used all kinds of highly disgusting, biological warfare methods against her.
But the exact second Makoto casually stated it, Naruto believed it immediately as gospel truth.
Why?!
"But why?! Why did Kurama tell me she was the bad woman who stole its chakra?!" Naruto asked Makoto in utter confusion, pointing an accusatory finger at his own stomach.
"The Nine-Tails?! So it was that damn Nine-Tails stirring up trouble in your head?! That explains it! That damned Nine-Tails—that inhenrently evil demon fox—!"
The very moment Kushina heard Naruto's confused question, she instantly understood the manipulation and started cursing the beast in absolute fury, her hair lifting into the air.
"Don't you dare insult Kurama! Kurama, my sworn partner, is the coolest!" Naruto immediately snapped back, cutting off Kushina's angry rant to defend his best friend.
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