爆発！« explosion »

II

With Kurama
(and the Uzumaki-Namikaze Twins)

Naruto winced where he lay on the sealing altar, feeling the ridiculously heavy chakra of the Kyūbi no Kitsune weigh on his tiny stomach. The fox considerately did not struggle, making the process much less uncomfortable, but it was still painful for a foreign chakra to enter his body with or without a seal as an intermediary. The blond child valiantly fought against the urge to fall into unconsciousness but allowed his eyes seem to slide shut when he had really left them a crack open to be able to see his surroundings while hiding the fact that he was still awake.

Kushina, on the other hand, was not so lucky. As the adrenaline wore off, she collapsed to the ground limply. Minato, on the other hand, just rushed to his wife's side, picking up the woman bridal-style and scooping up the blond baby.

He took his wife and son to the safe-house where his two biological children had slept through the whole fiasco. Minato made two shadow clones to carry Kushina and Naruto, picking up his children, one in each arm. He had known from the start, thanks to Tsunade's checkup, that he was to have one son and one daughter, but he had not known which was which. Minato picked up the two children and made a quick check (he had the right to, after all, he was their father), finding out that the red-haired child with fairer skin like Kushina's was female while the red-blond haired child that had his natural tan was the male child. Minato wondered briefly about the colour of the eyes of his children, musing that it would definitely be adorable to see a mini Kushina running around the village pulling pranks on people. While Natsume had a facial structure that vaguely resembled Kushina's rounded face, Naomi's facial structure was more defined, resembling her father more.

Minato compared his twin children to their adopted older brother, finding himself smiling at the sight. Naruto fit right in with his two dear children. A redhead, a blond and a blond with natural red highlights when put together was not strange at all. Naruto looked like one of his own children, just a little older. Minato sighed as he realised that the blond child was going to be in a different graduating class from the two younger children if he decided to attend the shinobi academy, which was very likely seeing as both he and his wife were very high ranking shinobi.

Minato flashed back to the village using his hiraishin and ordered his clone to drop Kushina off at the hospital before bringing his three children along to address the village.

"People of Konoha. I am saddened to announce that our shinobi forces have been reduced to seventy-five per cent of its original population due to the unprecedented strike by the Kyūbi no Kitsune. I would like to inform all of you that this was neither an accident nor an occurrence caused by a malfunction of the seal that kept the fox sealed in its jinchūriki. It was pure foul play, a ploy carried out by a strange man with an orange swirled mask who possesses the Sharingan of the Uchiha clan. Though the unknown intruder bore their kekkei-genkai, I can safely say that this attack was not the doing of the Uchiha clan that resides within Konoha. It was either an Uchiha that had never been accounted for or one that was presumed to be dead, which I deduced because of the lack of similarity of the chakra signature of the man and any Uchiha in the village. May we all remain vigilant and remain prepared for another attack, however unlikely it is!" Minato declared, the crowd receiving his speech with loud cheering and smattering applause.

"The Kyūbi no Kitsune has been safely defeated and sealed into a new jinchūriki. Though the identity of the jinchūriki is not to be revealed, I would like to inform all of you here that the jinchūriki is merely the only line of defence between our village and the mighty bijū. This is why I am here to tell all of you that the jinchūriki of the fox is the real hero of the day. Not me, who did the sealing. Not Kushina, who held the fox down as it was sealed. No, your hero is the one whose life has been sacrificed for our village. The sealing scroll that contains the kunai is harmless. However, the kunai in the scroll is the one that can truly harm. As long as no one does anything to remove said kunai from its scroll, it is harmless. A scroll cannot kill, it is the kunai that can cut. For protecting the village from the demon fox, let us all applaud the one who had made a huge sacrifice to save our village from its destruction!" Minato finished soulfully.