Chapter 22: Kurama’s Outburst

Yuna’s fingers started to glow blue and she started drawing seal after seal in the air. Those seals would simply stay in the air without moving at all. Creating seals midair is something only those considered seal masters can do. After writing seals nonstop for five minutes, Yuna was finished creating the key. As soon as the last seal was in place, the whole seal array imploded and shrunk into the form of an actual key. Next, she approached the cage that contained a clearly excited Kurama and started to slowly remove the seal tag that was above the keyhole of the cage. Just a moment before she could take it off completely, one of the chakra sources inside of it started to move and manifested into a taller version of Naruto, who immediately grabbed Yuna’s hand to stop her from removing the seal.

“You shouldn’t remove that.”

This man was Minato Namikaze, the deceased fourth Hokage and the twin’s father.

Minato had been watching the world through Yuna’s eyes, yet he had no idea what to make of it. Because he couldn’t see what was going on in Yuna’s mindscape, he could only judge her by what she’s done while living in Konoha. She was clearly not a normal child – having knowledge and abilities she shouldn’t have yet, and clearly a lot of experience with surviving. On the other hand, she did everything she could to protect Naruto, who clearly was a normal child from Minato’s perspective. Although he was doubtful of her, he was thankful as well. Freeing the Kyuubi is, however, a completely different matter. No matter what kind of lies the Kyuubi has fed her, Minato had to convince her not to unseal him. Having already went through a dozen scenarios of the conversation, what Yuna did next completely shattered his plans.

She rolled her eyes at him and started talking.

“Yeah, yeah, father, let’s talk about that another time since you need to hug someone now.”

He expected Yuna to be under the Kyuubi’s influence; filled with rage and barely conscious, yet she greeted him casually and even knew who he is? What was going on?

Before he could think too deeply about that, however, a yellow-orange bullet hug-tackled him to the ground.

“FATHER!!!”

Getting tackled, Minato instinctually started to counterattack when suddenly his mind registered what Naruto had called him and stopped mid-attack.

‘Father? But Yuna is right there. Is that Naruto? Why is he here as well? Is their mindscape connected?’

However, seeing the sobbing Naruto who was currently hugging him, he quickly pushed the unnecessary thoughts away and started to hug Naruto back to soothe him.

Unfortunately for him, Yuna used that moment of distraction to quickly take off the seal, push the key inside the keyhole and open up the cage.

Minato’s eyes immediately widened in terror.

“What have you done? Why did you set that monster free?”

Minato quickly moved in front of Yuna to defend her from the Kyuubi’s attacks, but to his surprise, the expected attacks never came. Even though the cage had already vanished, the Kyuubi was still laying on the ground, looking at him like he was an idiot.

“What is going on? Why isn’t…”

“What is going on?”

Before Minato could fully think through the situation, another person had appeared. Crimson-red long hair and purple eyes. The twin’s mother, Kushina Uzumaki. When she felt that the seal was being lifted, she was naturally ready to help Yuna to get control of the Kyuubi’s chakra, but she had no idea what to make out of the current situation.

‘Yuna doesn’t seem to be under the influence of the Kyuubi at all. Why are Naruto and Minato here as well and most importantly: Why isn’t the Kyuubi attacking us?’

Kushina was just about to ask some more questions when she received the same treatment as Minato.

“MOTHER!!!”

A hug-tackle to the ground. She reacted much faster than Minato and immediately hugged Naruto back. Although she doesn’t understand the situation, that doesn’t matter for now.

While Kushina was distracting Naruto, Minato quickly approached Yuna to understand the situation.

“Yuna, what is going on here? Why isn’t that monster attacking us?”

Yuna could see, out of the corners of her eyes, that Kurama was slowly getting angry at constantly being called a monster, so she decided to quickly explain everything.

“Well, long story short, I became friends with the Kyuubi. I got him out of the cage so he can roam my mindscape freely and he won’t try to break out of my body in return.”

Minato, instead of calming down, became even more outraged.

“WHAT! You became friends with that monster? There is no way you can trust it. It will stab you in the back before-“

Kurama’s last drop of patience finally ran out. Well, he never had any of those drops anyway.

[Stop calling me a monster already! Do you even know what you are talking about, the butcher that is called the Yellow Flash? 1000 people! You killed that many people in the span of a single day, YET I am the monster?]

Minato was about to interject with his own words, but Kurama wasn’t done yet.

[Madara, that bastard, hunted me down, enslaved me with those disgusting eyes of his, and then forced me to fight in his retarded lover’s quarrel with Hashirama, yet I am the monster? That Hashirama bastard hunted down not only me, but also all of my siblings, imprisoned us, and then gave us away as presents for the other villages, yet I am the monster? As soon as I get another chance to finally be free, yet another person arrives and forces me to fight. Do you truly think I give a damn about your shitty little village? Another 200 years later and it will be gone anyway. Destroyed by the greed of other humans, like every one of the civilizations you have managed to create so far.

I have been imprisoned for over fifty years now. In those years not a single word was spoken to me. Yuna was the first person who talked with me normally in centuries and so we became friends. I thought I could stand your presence for Yuna’s sake, but I really can’t take it anymore.]

Without saying another word, Kurama turned around and left for the forest, leaving a rather awkward silence behind.

“*Sigh*, you made him angry. It will take me a while to calm him down.”

The first one to get out of their stupor was Minato.

“Was that true? I mean, what it said?”

“First of all – “HE”, not “IT” and I am pretty sure you can answer this yourself. He didn’t exactly tell you any secrets. Look at Konoha’s history and you will know the truth.”

Minato winced upon hearing this. He never bothered to think too deeply about how the Bijuu’s are treated, but now that he heard it from another perspective, it really was messed up. He can’t even argue against it, since it is literally written in Konoha’s history books like that.

“*Sigh*, he probably doesn’t care about that, but I hope you can tell him that I would like to apologize for calling him a monster.”

“Sure. He will probably pretend to not care about it, but will secretly be happy you apologized. “

“You sure seem to know him well, huh?”

“Haha, I do. However, enough with the pleasantries. I believe we need to talk about something. Just the two of us.”

Minato’s face grew serious after hearing Yuna’s comment.

‘Indeed, I want to know who the person in front of me really is. It seems like she is willing to tell me, that is good.’

“Kushina, Naruto, I need to discuss something in private with Yuna.”

Although Kushina knew what Minato wanted to discuss with Yuna, she would rather spend some more time with her children instead of wasting time “discussing serious matters”. She was just about to start scolding Minato when Naruto hugged her even harder.

“Don’t worry, kaa-san. If it is nee-san, she will have a reason for talking in private.”

There really isn’t much Kushina can say about that. Naruto seems to trust her completely and from what she has seen so far, there was no reason to put any doubt in her either.

“Fine, then I will just stay with you.”

Naruto only nodded while enjoying the time with his mother.

What no one noticed, however, was that after seeing Kurama’s outburst Naruto made a certain resolve for himself.

‘I will definitely become his friend!’

Meanwhile, Minato and Yuna were walking into the forest and stopped after being out of hearing range.

“So, tell me, Yuna: Who are you?”