Green hills and clear water. Shinichi Hyūga looked up at the sky; the bright sun made him squint. The scent of fresh grass calmed him.
Using his Byakugan to scan the area, he could see the complex seals and barriers woven around the site.
"This is the training place Minato prepared for Kushina," he said. "He's thought of everything."
The lake-and-cliff location soothes the mind and isolates danger. The barriers hide the site from outsiders and would help restrain a tailed beast if it ever went berserk.
The cliffside buildings held basic facilities that Minato had already arranged. All the preparation meant: helping Kushina would be a long, careful task.
"Kushina!" Minato called toward a huge waterfall across the way. A red figure burst out from the falls and flew toward the shore. Kushina, wrapped in a chakra cloak shaped like the Nine-Tails, landed with a trailing chakra tail that balanced her descent.
Jiraiya looked surprised at Kushina's state. She laughed and greeted everyone. Her eyes swept over Yamato and Shisui — and she introduced herself warmly. Yamato bowed awkwardly; Shisui responded politely. Kushina's open manner left a good first impression.
Jiraiya couldn't hide his concern: Kushina's chakra wasn't entirely her own. Minato had partially lifted the seal, and some Nine-Tails chakra was spilling out.
Kushina showed them: with a smile, she let a red chakra cloak re-form, and a chakra tail appeared behind her. Her nails sharpened and her pupils narrowed into vertical slits — signs of the tailed beast's influence.
Jiraiya touched Kushina's palm and felt a burning heat under his fingertips. He pulled back, alarmed. Shinichi, Yamato, and Shisui came closer to inspect. They had to know how the Nine-Tails chakra affected her and where her tolerance limit was.
"Nine-Tails chakra is corrosive," Jiraiya warned. "Kushina, do you sense that?"
Kushina nodded. Her healing had become very strong since becoming a jinchūriki, so small exposures didn't hurt her body yet.
But the greater danger, she explained, was emotional: the Nine-Tails' hatred and negative feelings seep through its chakra. The stronger the chakra she used, the more that hatred tried to overwhelm her mind.
As the chakra flared, more of the tailed beast's will seeped out. Sand and dust lifted from the ground and formed a swirling halo around her.
Kushina said this was the limit she could control: at three tails, she still had a grip; at four tails, her mind would be lost, and she would act only on instinct. So far, she'd managed three tails for years but couldn't push beyond it.
Minato explained his intelligence on the matter: the Wind Country's Cloud Village trained "perfect jinchūriki" using a place called the True Waterfall.
There, a jinchūriki apparently faces their inner self and purges negative emotion before slowly learning to coexist with the beast's chakra. Konoha didn't have such a miracle place, so Minato had tried to recreate the idea at this lake.
Natural waterfalls are not the same—Kushina still needed to learn how to purge the hatred inside the Nine-Tails.
Jiraiya thought aloud. Kushina is sunny by nature but bears emotional scars; the Nine-Tails could magnify those and make them dangerous. So, how to reach the mental state needed?
Shinichi stepped forward with a simple suggestion: meditation and zazen. If Kushina could train her mind to accept the tailed-beast's presence without reacting—to let the negative currents pass through without being swept up—she might raise her threshold. Shinichi proposed repeated exposure and calm training: the jinchūriki adapts by steady practice.
Jiraiya and Minato considered it. The chance of success was small and the risk large, but it might be the only practical path.
Jiraiya added another idea: teach Kushina senjutsu (Sage techniques). Senjutsu requires stillness and an empty mind—precisely the mental discipline that would help resist the Nine-Tails' emotional invasion.
Even if Kushina didn't become a "perfect jinchūriki," learning senjutsu would strengthen her and be a valuable outcome.
Minato asked Kushina if she could sit and meditate. She tried, but the Nine-Tails' emotions kept tugging at her; she couldn't settle. As the three-tailed state prolonged, chakra spilled faster, and danger rose.
"Minato!" Jiraiya warned. Minato called out to Yamato. Yamato sprang forward, pressed a hand to Kushina's brow, and chanted a sealing/containment technique that Minato had prepared.
Yamato's Wood-style power, coupled with the pre-set seal, drew in and suppressed the escaped chakra. The swirling cloak shrank; Kushina fell back, exhausted but alive.
Jiraiya praised Yamato — his wood release and the seals were exactly what the plan needed. Kushina was disappointed but not defeated; recovery for an Uzumaki was fast.
Jiraiya encouraged a step-by-step approach: first, learn to sit and meditate, then he'd take her to Mount Myōboku to try senjutsu. That course could both control the Nine-Tails and potentially give Kushina a powerful new path.
Watching closely, Shinichi noticed a technical detail: the tailed-beast cloak is formed from yin–yang (Izanagi-like) chakra qualities.
That hinted that someone with Yin–Yang release aptitude — like Shinichi, who'd been sensing his own changing chakra — might be able to mirror that cloak. He experimented at the edge of the training, adjusting Yin–Yang ratios in his palm, testing whether he could recreate the fluid, adherent chakra layer.
This mission was twofold: help Kushina learn to control the Nine-Tails, and let Shinichi study tailed-beast chakra up close.
Day one ended with a plan: steady meditation training, careful exposure, Wood-seal safety measures, and a future trip to learn sage arts. The path would be slow, but with Yamato, Shisui, Jiraiya, Minato, and Shinichi together, Kushina's progress had a real chance.
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