Bang ! Bang ! Bang!
On the other side of the iron gate, the Nine Tails bristled. It dropped low, bared its fangs, then arched and slammed a pair of monstrous claws against the bars.
Naruto said nothing.
The suddenly appearing Fourth Hokage said nothing.
In that shadowed space, only the Nine Tails raged and hammered away.
Before long it stopped. It realized that no matter how it tried, this gate would not break.
"Damn it. Why will the seal still not open. Fourth Hokage. Come here so I can tear you apart."
"Sorry, Nine Tails, that is impossible. I did not come out to see you. The time left to a father and son is precious."
With his back to the Nine Tails, the Fourth Hokage spoke calmly. But when he met Naruto's eyes, calm and unreadable, his heart lurched.
"Um, Naruto, I am"
"You are the Fourth Hokage. The fox in there already shouted it. Your face is also on the Hokage Rock. I recognize you. I read about you in the Konoha almanac. You are Namikaze Minato, the Yellow Flash whose name shook the ninja world."
Naruto looked over the man who was his father in this world and took the lead.
"Uh"
Minato's expression stalled. That was not what he had meant to say.
Behind the gate the Nine Tails fell strangely quiet, suddenly finding the situation interesting.
Awkwardness settled over them.
Minato had longed to meet his son. Yet Naruto was only four. When the boy ripped the tag from the gate, Minato had been more stunned than the fox.
How was he supposed to explain. How could he acknowledge each other.
He had watched from the seal as Naruto grew. He knew exactly what kind of life the boy led.
No one in the village accepted his son.
In Konoha they even called him the demon fox to his face. They said, right in front of him, that he had killed his own father.
What cut deepest was that Minato had entrusted Naruto to the Third Hokage. Faced with the child's mistreatment, the Third let it go.
Not one of Minato's former subordinates had stepped forward to help his son.
Naruto had begged for the chance to learn his letters. Even yesterday his qualification to study ninjutsu had almost been denied.
Everything he had meant to leave the child had been taken away.
He and Kushina had sacrificed themselves for this.
Guilt weighed on him. He even feared to face this moment. When he first met Naruto's gaze, Minato's heart quivered.
There was a depth of chill in his son's eyes that seemed endless.
That look almost made him want to flee with Flying Thunder God.
At that moment, the prompt from the Mirror World flickered through Naruto's mind. Surprise flashed in his eyes. He noticed his father's face shifting rapidly from dark to light as if wrestling with a storm of thoughts.
In his past life he had never truly known family. In this life, family seemed to have no part on the path he walked.
Feeling the return of a long absent twinge of sentiment, Naruto frowned, recalling the reluctant parting words that had brushed his ears four years ago. Those had been true.
They had to acknowledge each other. He should keep laying the steps down.
He spoke first. "Fourth Hokage, why are you here. Please explain."
"Heh heh, yes, brat, make him give you a proper explanation. He is the mighty Fourth Hokage after all. Hahaha."
Minato drew breath to speak, but the Nine Tails cut in from behind the gate.
"Naruto, it is too noisy here. Let us go somewhere quiet. I will tell you everything slowly."
Minato's face turned sour. The fox's gloating grated on him.
The chakra he had left in the seal followed a principle like a shadow clone. It was only a small portion. His true soul, bound by the Reaper Death Seal together with the other half of the Nine Tails, remained in the belly of the Shinigami.
There was time, but not much.
If the Nine Tails kept interfering, he might vanish before he could finish. Who knew if Naruto would ever learn the truth after that. From the look of things, the Third did not intend to tell the boy about his parentage at all.
He had to seize this chance to leave something for his son and to tell him who he was. He owed him that.
Bang
Bang bang
"Roar. Damn you, Fourth Hokage."
No way.
The Nine Tails bellowed. It had come to enjoy the show, but Minato wanted to take the boy aside. Rage surged and its claws started pounding the bars again.
No matter how long it struck, the gate did not budge. Its fury rose higher. Chakra boiled off its body like smoke.
Minato's face tightened. He was about to wave them into a quieter place when Naruto moved first.
Naruto stepped to the gap in the bars, lifted his chin to the fox head the size of a house, and said, "Friend, can you cooperate. If you keep quiet, we will talk here. If not, we will have to leave."
Duang
The Nine Tails glared at him, then stabbed a talon through the gap. It stopped a hair from Naruto's forehead, as if one twitch would pop his skull.
Naruto ignored the claw and met those crimson slitted eyes without retreat.
"Hmph. Vexing brat."
"Thank you."
The fox did not promise, but Naruto treated its silence as agreement.
He returned to stand before his father. "You can explain now."
"I do not even know where to begin."
Minato truly did not. If a four year old learned the truth, how could he forgive his father.
Naruto glanced at the red eyed fox and said, "Start from the beginning. What is this space. Why are you here. Why is it here."
"And to save time, I will be clear first. I know that both you and that one are inside my body. We can skip that part. I understand."
"Hm" twice.
"The fox's gaze is as vicious as ever."
"The Fourth Hokage is truly hateful."
Minato and the Nine Tails met each other's eyes by reflex, both thinking their own thoughts, then looked away.
Naruto watched him. Minato gathered himself. "Then I will begin. Long ago there was a demon fox with nine tails. When it lashed its tails, mountains crumbled."
"Four years ago, a masked man appeared, one who possessed the Uchiha clan's Sharingan."
"Thus it was, thus it became. In the end I used the Reaper Death Seal to seal half of the Nine Tails' chakra and a portion of my own into your body. So you are now the Nine Tails' jinchuriki."
Minato finished. Naruto glanced toward the gate, surprised to find the fox had kept silent the whole time.
Looking back, he saw hope, guilt, grief, and even anger in eyes the same blue as his own.
"So it is a tailed beast called the Nine Tails"
"Hmph. That is what you humans call me."
The great fox snapped back at once. It might be a beast with nine tails, but its name was not Nine Tails.
Naruto understood why it objected. "Then we should introduce ourselves properly later."
The fox pretended not to hear.
Naruto turned and spoke evenly. "So Uzumaki Kushina is my mother."
"Mm."
At the sound of Naruto's voice, Minato's gloom vanished without a trace. Warmth filled his eyes and he nodded.
"You are the Fourth Hokage, and you are my father."
"Mm."
Titles meant nothing to Minato. All he heard was Naruto recognizing him as father, and he nodded hard.
Naruto's next words left him frozen where he stood.
"But my mother is gone, and you have long since died, my father."
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