[Seven days—another seven days!]
[Naruto's side has to be up next, right?]
[Here we go!]
[Serve it up already!]
For everyone present in that cave, the gap had been a single instant.
But for the audience—two full episodes had gone by.
Because the moment the Nine-Tails' chakra surged in, the previous episode had ended.
The next episode had opened on Kakashi versus Zabuza—two shinobi who had started talking and somehow talked their way to genuine fury, before finally clashing in earnest. After that, the remaining runtime had split between Haku facing off with Hanabi's Shadow Clone—and then, right as the cave situation escalated again, the episode ended. Again.
The Dimensional Popularity Stage understood exactly how to stretch suspense.
Now, in a new episode, the camera had finally returned to Naruto and Sasuke.
The colossal chakra radiated outward in every direction like pressure made physical. Sasuke, flat on the ground and unable to move, could only watch.
"What happened—did my shuriken disrupt the technique?!"
Yukii was breathing in ragged pulls. She checked her arm.
The dark energy that had been consuming her—that strange, wrongness-adjacent power—was running out of control, spreading across her body like ink in water.
"I can't let the Nine-Tails manifest on him like this... I have to hold on just a little longer..."
She charged Naruto again.
The Nine-Tails' ominous chakra cut into her like blades just from proximity. She coughed blood, the black chakra bleeding further across her. She pressed both hands to Naruto's stomach—and felt something terrible begin to freeze her from the inside, locking her in place.
"Nine-Tails... you're mine..."
But the surging power threw her back again.
—Hm?
Somewhere deep in her awareness, a consciousness registered the sounds from outside.
Voices. Coming from a distance.
"Naruto!"
Too late, I'm afraid. The Nine-Tails is already coming.
The consciousness floated, unmoored.
Am I dead? Then why do I still have consciousness?
"Kushina [Yukii]!"
Someone calling me?
—No. Someone else.
That wasn't her name being called.
"You know how much Naruto trusts you?! Why would you kill Naruto to release that monster?!"
A hoarse voice, raw and furious.
"Naruto? My... child...?"
Kushina opened her eyes.
The moment full awareness returned, she understood what had happened.
Someone had performed some kind of ritual—and drawn her, already dead, back out of the Pure Land.
No. Not her specifically.
From what she'd just heard, the intent had been to summon the Nine-Tails.
"Ugh..."
She raised her hands.
Both were swathed in the Nine-Tails' chakra.
Uzumaki Kushina. Naruto's mother. The previous Nine-Tails Jinchūriki.
Even she had never felt the Nine-Tails' chakra behave like this—as if her very existence had become a shell containing the beast.
I see. They were trying to summon the Nine-Tails, but pulled my soul out of the Pure Land instead.
It resembled Impure World Reincarnation in structure. Using the summoned soul to inhabit a vessel, reshaping the vessel in the summoned being's image. But the caster clearly hadn't accounted for her chakra being woven into the Nine-Tails' seal all along.
She understood immediately: if she simply refused this summoning—if she rejected it—she could return to the afterlife.
But doing so might let the enemy's plan succeed after all. Her chakra had wrapped around the Nine-Tails, and if she left now, that containment would fail. The Nine-Tails could go berserk inside Naruto with nothing holding it.
"I won't let you."
Oh.
Someone else spoke those words.
Was that me?
No. A different voice, from inside this chakra—from something nested within her.
Kushina's heart skipped.
Naruto. That was her child's name. He was also the Nine-Tails' Jinchūriki.
Then that voice—that was...
"I'll... hold it..."
Naruto was fighting. Struggling.
But a twelve-year-old boy, standing against a force this immense—he couldn't win. That he could even hold onto consciousness at all was extraordinary.
Kushina wanted to reach out and hold her child. To tell him: I'm not the Nine-Tails. I'm here.
But in that moment, something else arrived.
Black chakra. Deeply wrong.
"A minor complication." Yukii pulled herself upright, one hand pressed to her chest.
The air went glacial.
"Nine-Tails. Your power cannot be allowed to emerge like this...!"
"What's happening..."
Sasuke was bewildered—and then he understood.
"Right. My last attack disrupted her technique. So the Nine-Tails wasn't extracted—it just manifested on Naruto directly!"
Naruto's body was wrapped in that power, visibly larger than before, and for a moment he seemed to shift—feminine in outline, tails of condensed chakra materializing behind him like fox tails.
The ritual had succeeded. And it had failed.
"There's still a chance—as long as the Nine-Tails hasn't been taken!"
Sasuke forced his exhausted body upright and screamed: "Don't let the Nine-Tails win, Naruto!"
[The second lead throwing himself into it for the hero—yes!]
[When I heard the BGM shift, I thought Naruto was actually done for—I was thinking, this shonen series is really going that dark?]
[Naruto owes Hashirama-senpai a full bow]
[Oh damn, fox girl]
[So the Nine-Tails was female?]
[That's not a surprise—it's the Nine-Tailed Fox, of course she's female]
[Something feels off though—doesn't this woman look kind of like the Madam?]
Sasuke had no idea what he was seeing. The audience was equally baffled.
But while Sasuke was reeling from the raw chakra pressure—and Kushina, newly arrived, was still piecing things together—the viewers caught the detail.
The orange-red human silhouette Naruto had taken on bore a distinct resemblance to the woman across from them: Kushina Yukii.
—Well, obviously. Hanabi designed her.
Is this the enemy?
Kushina studied the woman in front of her.
Her face was etched in fury. Her chakra was the same ominous wrongness as the Nine-Tails'.
Ice-blue hair and crimson eyes—the exact opposite of herself, as if drawn to mirror her.
"Cough... cough..."
But for all that overwhelming chakra, her body looked like it was barely hanging on. That strange, dark power was eating her alive.
"Come then, Nine-Tails. Let's see which is stronger—the god of death's power, or yours."
"Aunt Yukii!"
Her own voice.
No—Naruto's.
Is he calling me?
No. The other one. That woman.
And when Kushina heard Naruto's voice, she understood something.
This person—this woman—was someone he had held closest of all.
Yet he was calling her name in a voice that sounded like it was being torn out of him.
"Aunt Yukii, you're going to die! I heard everything—what Hanabi and Kakashi-sensei said! If you keep using this power you'll die! Why?! Why are you doing this?!"
"...Because I am an avenger. I will... burn the Hidden Mist to ash. For my child. For Narumen..."