"Oh, right."
After the Yin Nine-Tails was securely sealed back into Kushina's body, Tobirama Senju remembered a crucial detail.
"Since you've chosen to hold onto it, remember this: Do not have any physical contact with Naruto. Otherwise, the chakra of the Yin and Yang halves will immediately resonate like a bond and they will instantly transfer each other's memories."
"?"
Kushina, who was initially overjoyed about being back, instantly formed a massive question mark over her head.
'Wait, why the hell are you only mentioning this AFTER it's sealed inside me?!'
Not long ago, she had just activated the lingering chakra imprint she left in Naruto, happily waiting for that lump of chakra to help her see her son first.
Then she could appear to him in the flesh without any hesitation.
Now, right when they're finally in the same time zone, she's hit with a restraining order?
What kind of tragic soap opera is this?
Finally able to meet, yet they can't touch.
It would be better not to meet at all!
What if Naruto tries to hug her, she dodges, and he misunderstands her?!
That would ruin his fragile teenage heart!
"If I had known it came with a 'No Touching' clause, I might as well have stuffed the stupid fox into Kakashi! He's always running out of chakra anyway!" Kushina grumbled under her breath.
"Absolutely not! Do not even think about giving it to Kakashi!" Tobirama immediately barked, his face turning unusually stern.
"Huh? I was just joking! But... why not?" Kushina found his intense reaction strange.
If given to Kakashi, wouldn't it perfectly fix his Chakra deficiency? Moreover, that way, all four surviving members of Team Minato would technically be Jinchuriki.
It would be like a matching team uniform!
How harmonious....
"Have you not realized yet how uncomfortably deep the bond between Kakashi and that Obito Uchiha is? The two of them are completely, inextricably tied together!"
Tobirama wore a deeply pained expression, as if he had witnessed horrors beyond human comprehension.
He looked like he wanted to say more but hesitated.
"What is it? Lord Second, what the hell have you discovered? Tell me!" Kushina noticed his expression and urgently pressed for answers.
"The Edo Tensei body has no physical sensations, and ordinary sight and hearing are diminished. But for a sensory-type ninja like myself, chakra perception becomes infinitely sharper to compensate..."
Tobirama rambled through a scientific preface before sighing heavily, rubbing his temples, and dropping the bomb.
"I sensed my Big Brother cells inside Kakashi's body. And what's even more alarming... is that the highest concentration of residual traces... were found in his mouth."
"..."
"I asked Big Brother about it. He confirmed he didn't do anything to Kakashi during his time in the village. Though Big Brother has a highly questionable, complicated relationship with Uchiha Madara, he's always been an upright idiot—if he did something, he'd admit it. So I believe him."
Tobirama looked Kushina dead in the eye.
"Then... how did Big Brother's cells end up inside Kakashi's mouth?"
"!"
Upon hearing the Second Hokage's grim forensic analysis, Kushina suddenly remembered!
She and Rin had witnessed it with their own eyes!
Back when Kakashi had fallen into a coma from Kamui-overuse, the Masked Man (Obito) had risked infiltrating the Hidden Leaf, walked right up to Kakashi's sickbed and administered his own Hashirama-cell serum to heal him.
As for how he administered it... that was hard to say.
Obito had his back turned to her and Rin, blocking their view.
They couldn't see the exact mechanism—they could only imagine it.
'Maybe it was an oral syringe?' Kushina thought, her fujoshi conscience suddenly feeling incredibly guilty.
'Please let it just be a syringe!'
"Wait a second," Kushina shook her head, trying to stay tactical. "By that logic, shouldn't giving Kakashi the Nine-Tails be a good thing? Just like when we revive Rin and make her the Three-Tails Jinchuriki!"
Reviving Rin and giving her the Three-Tails was meant to force Obito into a psychological corner—would he kill Rin to extract the beast?
If he couldn't, it meant he could be redeemed.
If he could, they'd just execute him.
Based on Tobirama's forensic evidence and what she had witnessed, Obito and Kakashi clearly shared a very intense.... friendship.
In that case, Kakashi could take Rin's place as the ultimate hostage test!
Make Kakashi the Jinchuriki and see if Obito would dare extract the Nine-Tails, which would kill him.
Think about it—Obito hadn't even taken back his left Mangekyo Sharingan, which was arguably his most vital asset.
How much must he care about Kakashi?
"That's a nice, logical theory," Tobirama said grimly. "But you fail to understand that the bonds between a gay men—like Big Brother and Madara—can easily become... twisted."
Tobirama shuddered. "I once saw a pair of conjoined twins named Sakon and Ukon at Orochimaru's lab. What if the Masked Man doesn't kill Kakashi, but instead chooses to physically merge their bodies together to indirectly absorb the Nine-Tails?"
"And according to Makoto, Obito originally had half his body crushed by a boulder, replacing it with White Zetsu goo. That makes him practically modular! It would be horrifyingly easy for him to just assimilate into Kakashi like a parasite!"
Tobirama effectively shattered Kushina's hostage fantasy!
Kushina mentally pictured Obito and Kakashi melding together into a Cronenberg flesh-monster to share the Nine-Tails, and couldn't help but violently shudder.
Too terrifying.
Absolutely cursed!
Indeed.....it really was too twisted.
And given the Uchiha track record for dramatic obsession, it was entirely possible.
Obito would never merge with Rin—that would be disrespectful.
But with Kakashi? All bets were off.
"Alright, alright! I'll keep the damn fox!" Kushina patted her stomach defensively. "Maybe I should just go to Amegakure. If I stay in the Leaf and run into Naruto but have to dodge his hugs, it'll break his heart. Going to Rain will let me keep Rin company anyway."
"A wise decision."
Tobirama placed a hand on Kushina's shoulder and using Flying Thunder God, teleported her safely out of the village.
...
Meanwhile, in the Kamui Dimension.
"Achoo!"
The Masked Man, having just finished painfully healing the Rasengan-shaped crater in his spine, sneezed loudly.
'Strange.'
'With my Hashirama-cell physique, can I still catch a cold?'
Obito stared blankly at a massive, perfectly smooth, semicircular depression carved into the concrete ground of the Kamui Dimension.
He wondered just what the hell Kakashi had teleported over this time.
Could it be a Giant Rasengan? That would somewhat explain why he'd been struck directly by one just as he was opening the portal earlier.
Minato must have thrown it, and Kakashi sucked the blast radius in here!
Still, the ground was damaged far too smoothly.
(Obito, of course, had absolutely no idea that this crater was formed by Danzo's Reverse Four Symbols Seal... which had also vaporized Danzo's soiled pants and the cursed calligraphy brush right in that exact spot).
Since no one else could enter the Kamui Dimension, Obito decided to get creative.
He maliciously stole a large bucket of cement and some luxury tiles from a civilian construction site in the real world, intending to patch up the hole.
But as he gazed at the cavity, a brilliant idea struck him.
He lined the blast pit with cement, tiled it beautifully, added a seating bench and piped in a continuous supply of scalding hot water from a natural hot spring outside.
'Wouldn't this make a perfect, private hot tub?'
Obito stripped down and slid into the steaming water.
'Bliss.'
'Absolute, relaxing bliss!'
(Somewhere in the distance, the ghost of Danzo's feces swirled gently in the jets).
After soaking in his cursed water for a while, it suddenly occurred to Obito that Kakashi had used Kamui again to teleport this "unknown large object" inside.
Given Kakashi's pathetic chakra pool, the idiot was probably unconscious in a hospital bed again.
And so, wanting to check on his oldest friend/greatest enemy, Obito warped out.
...
Konoha: Medical Department.
Inside Kakashi's private, highly secure hospital room, after the Anbu surveillance cameras had been mysteriously disabled with a Genjutsu, a swirling vortex appeared.
Obito stepped out of the portal, approaching the bed.
He pulled out a vial of his custom Hashirama-cell recovery serum.
Gurgle, gurgle.
He administered the dose to the sleeping Kakashi, ensuring his old teammate wouldn't go blind from chakra exhaustion.
Satisfied with his twisted act of mercy, Obito's figure spiraled back into the Kamui void and vanished.
Poof.
The moment Obito left, the "Kakashi" on the bed dissolved into a puff of white smoke.
It was a Shadow Clone.
In the adjacent hospital room on the other side of the wall, the real Kakashi Hatake sat leaning against the drywall, his breathing carefully suppressed.
Suddenly, the memories and sensory information from the dispelled Shadow Clone flooded directly into his brain.
He felt the phantom sensation of a masked man looming over him in the dark.
He felt the gurgle gurgle of the suspicious liquid being forced into his mouth.
Kakashi's face turned deathly, violently pale!
He lunged for the bedside trash can, fell to his knees and began relentlessly gagging and dry heaving!
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