"AHHH~"
Realizing the cursed scene before her wasn't a genjutsu, Kushina rolled her eyes back, let out a soul-leaving screech, and collapsed backward.
Before she hit the floor, her body vanished with a poof.
The chakra remnants Minato and Kushina left inside Naruto functioned a lot like Shadow Clones.
Thanks to the Uzumaki Clan's bullshit-level Sealing Techniques, these "clones" didn't disappear when the original died and had highly specific activation triggers.
Minato's ghost popped out when Naruto tried to break the Nine-Tails' seal.
Kushina's remnant was hardwired to trigger only after the seal was fully broken, right as Naruto prepared to seize the Tailed Beast Chakra.
Unlike normal clones, there wasn't enough power to form a physical body, so these remnants could only exist in the mental sewer space.
However, just like Shadow Clones, if they took severe damage or ran out of chakra, they would pop—sending their traumatizing memories right back to the original soul.
Kushina's sudden disappearance? Yeah, that was due to the sheer, unadulterated horror of walking in on her son giving her husband a wind-powered prostate exam.
The mental damage literally shattered her chakra construct.
"W-WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING?!"
Naruto's main body froze, completely stunned by the random red-haired woman popping in and instantly dying.
He even paused his assault on Minato.
"Naruto, your mom just exploded," Minato wheezed gently, taking a deep breath to compose his shattered dignity.
"Oh." Naruto snapped out of his daze and immediately resumed his assault.
"DAMN YOU, ENEMY! Not only did you impersonate my dad to ambush me, but you also insulted me with such weird bullshit! If I don't drill you to death today, I'll have failed Kakashi-sensei as his student! All those years of training the Thousand Years of Death will have been for nothing! PREPARE TO DIE!"
Naruto launched another furious attack!
"NARUTO, STOP IMMEDIATELY!" The Nine-Tails, having just slipped out of the Adamantine Sealing Chains after Kushina rage-quit, urgently called out.
While the giant fox would have paid good money to watch Minato suffer at his own son's hands, now wasn't the time for it.
If Naruto actually drilled Minato's ghost to death, causing him to pop like Kushina, they would be totally fucked.
They still needed the Fourth Hokage to bail them out of this crisis.
"Nine-Tails, what's wrong?! If I drill this fake to death, his Shadow Clone will send the trauma back to the real one outside! That'll expose his weakness and give us a chance to escape!" Naruto yelled at the fox, genuinely confused.
"IDIOT BRAT! What happened to following my orders?! This guy wasn't sent by the bone-freak outside. CALM DOWN!"
"Hey, Fourth Hokage! I'm making Naruto release you so you can take the wheel. Quickly take control of his physical body outside and escape that bone-freak's drill attack. You can do that, right? You don't want your son getting a massive, gaping hole punched through his ass, do you?"
"Alright," Minato agreed, his expression incredibly complex.
He felt a weird mix of pain and joy.
It was wonderful to see Naruto and the Nine-Tails sharing such a strong bond, trusting each other, and the demon fox going to such lengths to save his boy.
Yet here he was, treated like a disposable tool, destined to just witness their cursed friendship.
"Naruto, hand the control over to him. Trust me."
"Fine." Naruto dispelled his Shadow Clones and released Minato from the headlock.
Minato sighed.
He didn't say anything more.
At this point, declaring "I am your father" again would only make Naruto think he was asking for round two of the Thousand Years of Death.
What terrible timing!
Outside, an enemy with a voice nearly identical to his had used that exact phrase to ambush his son.
The chakra he left behind wasn't much—just enough for a single Sealing Technique.
Originally, it was meant to reinforce the fox's cage.
But that plan went to shit. And now, seeing them act like best buddies, reinforcing the seal wasn't even necessary.
"Nine-Tails, withdraw your chakra. I'm taking over," Minato ordered.
"Do it," the fox agreed.
Without a countdown, the Nine-Tails instantly sucked its chakra back into the cage.
Having been forced to share a body with Minato's seal for years, the fox was intimately familiar with the Hokage's god-tier reflexes.
As expected, the strategy was flawless.
First, expand the bone restraints using the thick chakra cloak.
Then, abruptly cancel the Half-Tailed Beast Transformation to gain temporary freedom of movement.
Earlier, Naruto had thrown a wired kunai hoping to pull himself free, but his execution was garbage.
Now... controlling his son's physical body, Minato reached into the ninja tool pouch and grabbed a handful of standard shuriken.
With a mere touch of his chakra, the Flying Thunder God formula spread across the metal.
Without hesitation, Minato hurled the shuriken into the sky.
The moment they left his hand, "Naruto's" physical body vanished from the drill's path, reappearing instantly beside one of the airborne shuriken.
He grabbed the spinning metal, reversed its trajectory with a flick of his wrist, and vanished again, teleporting even further away.
"He's so fast!" Kimimaro didn't even have time to blink before his target vanished into thin air.
The Sound Four erupted into chaos from the sidelines.
"Wait, isn't that the Flying Thunder Formation we've been practicing?!" Kidōmaru yelled.
"No, you idiot, that's the Fourth Hokage's Flying Thunder God Technique!" Tayuya snapped.
"What do you mean the Fourth Hokage's? It clearly belongs to the Second Hokage! Can't you respect Tobirama's invention?!" Sakon argued.
"Stop arguing about trivial bullshit!" Jirōbō interrupted. "Someone tell me how the hell the Nine-Tails Jinchūriki knows Space-Time Ninjutsu?!"
"Who knows? Maybe it's a family thing. If Namikaze Minato knew it, wouldn't his son inherit the scrolls?"
"You're a fucking moron!" Tayuya cursed. "If he really knew it, why didn't he use it from the start?! Why wait until Kimimaro was literally a millimeter away from drilling his ass?! What was he thinking? Did he think Kimimaro was giving him a prostate massage?!"
"You filthy hag! Your mind is disgusting!"
"EAT SHIT! You're the disgusting one!"
Kimimaro glanced at the four idiots arguing over semantics and sighed, releasing his Cursed Seal state.
He was still too weak!
Even after exhausting every strategy and completely abandoning his moral dignity to aim for the ass, he couldn't stop his opponent.
...
Hidden Rain Village
Upon receiving Kimimaro's distress signal, Orochimaru chose not to send backup.
Whether Naruto found Sasuke or not was of zero consequence to the snake Sannin.
Orochimaru merely told Kabuto to pull up the surveillance cameras to monitor the drama and ensure no one actually died.
Beyond that, he didn't give a shit about it.
...
Streets of the Hidden Rain Village
Meanwhile, Kushina, Rin, and Hanabi were leisurely strolling through the shopping district after a light training session.
Suddenly, Kushina stopped dead in her tracks.
Her mind was flooded with a vivid, traumatic memory transfer from her mental clone!
Her violet eyes widened in sheer horror before rolling straight back into her head, and she collapsed to the pavement, completely unconscious.
"?"
Hanabi, who barely managed to catch the red-haired woman as she fell, looked puzzled.
"What happened? Does Kushina-nee have the same tendency to randomly pass out as my sister Hinata?"