Menma and Kurama stood frozen, their eyes locked on the man who had appeared inside the seal—a space no one else had ever entered.
In the pale glow and frigid silence of that inner world, they stared at someone who should not have existed anymore. A man who died long ago. And yet, here he was.
Minato Namikaze.
The Fourth Hokage.
Menma's thoughts were tangled chaos, his mind unable to process what he was seeing. But Kurama, far older and far more aware, understood instantly. If anyone tried to forcefully break the seal—even someone as strong as him—they'd be met with the ghost of the Fourth himself.
Enraged, Kurama let out a deafening roar, his chakra flaring like a living storm. He lunged at Minato with enough force to shake the entire seal-space, the bars trembling as though they might shatter. But Minato remained still, expression unreadable, standing beside Menma without fear.
Menma, stunned, watched Kurama's fury erupt with a force he had never seen before. But even as he witnessed the beast's rage, he couldn't truly grasp what Kurama felt. Perhaps if he were split in two and forced to live inside a living acid bath, dissolving slowly each time he stirred, he might begin to understand. Only the gods knew how Kurama had endured so long within him.
"FOURTH HOKAGE! I'LL KILL YOU! I'LL RIP YOU TO PIECES! I'LL DESTROY YOU AND YOUR VILLAGE!"
Kurama howled, chakra smashing into the seal as he lashed out—but even in his fury, he avoided saying anything that would hurt Menma. The insults were violent, but carefully chosen.
Minato remained composed, though he could feel the heat of Kurama's hatred. He turned calmly to Menma, who was glaring at him with clenched fists, his jaw tight with emotion.
"Menma," Minato said softly, "Why don't we move to another place? Somewhere quiet. I can explain everything. We—"
"There's no need!" Menma cut him off coldly. "I'm not going anywhere. Especially not with you, Fourth Hokage."
The words hit like a slap. Minato paused mid-sentence, his offer hanging in the air like a thread cut too soon. Menma wasn't going to follow him anywhere—not when he was about to break the seal. And certainly not with a man who, in his eyes, had been the architect of all his suffering.
Minato had expected rejection. He knew the weight Menma carried, especially these past two years. Where other children might've been too young to understand, Menma had been too aware. Every cruel blow, every truth withheld, had landed with devastating clarity.
"Menma, I…"
"Don't." Menma's voice was quiet but razor-sharp. "Don't speak. Just go to your son and leave me alone."
The tension in Menma's body was visible, but his voice remained steady, almost hollow. Kurama, hearing the pain behind those words, fell silent. Beneath the boy's anger, he could feel something deeper. A sadness too vast to contain. A storm on the verge of collapse.
Minato slowly released the hand holding the sealing tag from his grip and took a small step back. He could finally see Menma more clearly—his wild and long red hair, his mother's features carved into a beautiful but broken face, and those eyes... eyes filled with things no child should ever have to carry.
They shared no resemblance. Not to Naruto. Not even to him.
They were strangers, born from the same blood.
The wound in Menma's heart pulsed again. And this time, he didn't try to hide it. He let it bleed.
"You shouldn't be here, you know," he said with a smirk that didn't reach his eyes. "You should be at the center of the village, celebrating your real son's birthday—'Naruto Namikaze.' With all the important people of the Land of Fire gathered around to shower him with love and praise."
His voice sharpened, words laced with something venomous and bitter.
"Not here. Not wasting time in the pathetic little tragedy of a hated Jinchūriki—someone born to be used, then thrown away once he's no longer needed."
Minato flinched.
The words pierced deeper than any weapon could.
Menma's face—his mother's face—tilted with mock innocence, his voice curling with cruel imitation:
"Oh, don't tell me... Are you here because you're worried I'll get jealous and attack the village? Afraid the 'spare son' might finally snap?"
He leaned in slightly, watching Minato's eye twitch—the smallest of reactions, but enough.
Menma grinned wider. "No way! Is it true? You're here to stop me?! Wow! Even in death, you're a Hokage first, and a father second."
Minato's silence spoke louder than any denial.
"Hahahaha! How noble! How... predictable!" Menma suddenly burst into laughter, clutching his stomach. The sound echoed around the seal like a cracked bell, distorted by the darkness gathering behind him.
Smoke-like tendrils of crimson chakra coiled from his shoulders and back—dark, suffocating, alive.
Kurama's eyes narrowed.
Minato's breath hitched.
"You sacrificed your wife... and one of your children... for the village," Menma hissed. "And look at what they've done with your gift! The first thing you choose to protect is still the village!"
His voice rose to a near-scream.
"You chose the village over me! Over and over again! And now you dare to show your face?! Do you even know how I've lived these past two years?!"
Minato's silence was answer enough.
"So you do know," Menma spat. "Did it ever cross your mind—when you sacrificed yourself, when you sacrificed my mother—how I would survive?!"
The silence shattered something inside Menma.
There stood the man he had once dreamed of meeting. A man he had longed for without ever understanding why. His father. The Fourth Hokage of Konoha. The hero of legends.
A man who had divided his children like tools—one to bear love, the other to bear weight.
Minato turned slightly, eyes drifting to Kurama—not out of fear, but shame. He couldn't meet his son's eyes.
He had failed him.
No excuses. No rewrites. Just failure.
"I never meant for it to be like this," Minato said, voice trembling now. "I tried to save your mother. I wanted all of you to live. Even if I couldn't be there. I believed you would rise—do the impossible. Just like you were born, hidden from the world."
His voice cracked. "I'm sorry. I truly am. Seeing you now—I wish I could hold you. But I only have this one chance. Once it's gone, I'll disappear. Forever."
He took a trembling breath. "Please... don't let this pain drive you. Don't become something you'll regret. Your mother—Kushina—she loved you so deeply, Menma. She gave you your name the moment she knew you existed. Even in pain, her first thought was your safety."
Minato knelt, lowering himself to the ground, arms open—not as the Hokage, but as a father.
"I'm not here to stop you," he whispered. "I just want you to think. Even if it's just for a moment... Please."
But Menma didn't move.
"Why?" he whispered. "Why now? Why you? Why do you even care? Shouldn't you be proud? Your son is the star of the village, right? Let go of me already."
He turned away.
"I've had enough. Of you. Of this village. Of its lies and its politics. I won't forgive anyone anymore. I'll hate you all—just like you wanted me to."
He looked at the fox.
"I have Snow. I have Mr.Fox. That's enough. That's all I need to fix this world... and leave it behind."
The smoke around him grew darker, denser. His body radiated with crimson light.
He didn't fall into Minato's arms.
He didn't want his embrace.
He didn't need his father.
He turned, gripped the corner of the tag again. His fingers closed around it, shaking with finality.
Minato rose to stop him—desperate, afraid. But just as he moved, a blast of foreign energy erupted from the very fabric of the seal itself. A primal force—Menma's own emerging presence—surged and slammed into Minato, throwing him violently across the space.
Menma didn't even look.
He turned to Kurama one last time, eyes filled with burning resolve.
And then—
He pulled the tag off.
But what Menma expected... didn't happen.
There was no violent explosion. No surge of raw chakra. No collapse of space or light. Just silence—unnatural and absolute—as if the tag he had just pulled was nothing more than a simple slip of paper on a lifeless wall.
Confused, he looked closer.
And that's when he saw it.
Beneath the tag, hidden in plain sight, was a metal helix—an ancient lock unlike anything else within the seal. Complex. Foreign. Alive. And it pulsed with power.
Menma leaned in. This... this was the real lock. This was what held the seal in place all along.
He turned sharply toward Minato, who was slowly rising from the ground, face calm but eyes carrying the weight of unspoken truth.
"What is this?" Menma asked, voice sharp with rising frustration.
Minato didn't avoid the question. He couldn't.
"The tag you removed contained my chakra—a backup. It would restore the seal if it were damaged. But the true core of the seal... is that lock. A final safeguard. To open it, you'll need a key—one I forged before sealing the Nine-Tails inside you."
The words fell heavy in the air.
So all of it—the anger, the decision, the sacrifice—would have been meaningless. Without the key, the seal remained unbroken.
Menma turned to Kurama, his mind racing. If he didn't have the key… then who did? He turned back to Minato, his voice cracking with suspicion.
"I sent the key to someone I trusted more than anyone," Minato explained softly. "My teacher. The one I believed would protect you when I no longer could. Jiraiya."
The name struck Menma like ice.
His memories reeled, dragging him back to the only time he had seen the so-called Sannin up close. The man hadn't visited him once since he left the hospital. He had never tried to see him, to speak to him. Not once. He had chosen to bury himself in drink and fleeting pleasures instead of facing the son of his student.
A wound reopened, bleeding resentment.
Menma broke into a fit of laughter—unhinged and cracked. His voice echoed through the seal like a madman who had finally snapped.
"Hahaha! You gave it to that perverted, irresponsible, alcoholic idiot?! Was there seriously no one else? Hahaha! Even Kakashi would've been a better choice! Him! Seriously?!"
He collapsed to his knees, laughter twisting into something darker. It was laughter born of betrayal, of hopelessness—a sound too wild to be joyful.
Minato didn't respond. He couldn't. Deep down, even he mourned the failure of his teacher—the man who was supposed to carry on the legacy he left behind.
Menma suddenly fell silent.
He stared at the bars again, as he had the first time he entered. Something had shifted inside him, a darkness welling beneath the surface. Kurama noticed it immediately and opened his mouth, intending to calm him—to reach him.
But it was too late.
With a sudden, gut-wrenching crack, chains of blood-red chakra erupted from Menma's back. They tore through the air like wrath given form.
"Ahhh!!" he screamed, clutching his skull. "Why?! Why does it always go wrong?!"
He slammed his fists into the bars.
"Again! (The birthday preparations...) Again! (The exams...) Again! (Starting a new life...) And again! (The moment I thought I could finally live...!)"
With each word, he struck the bars harder. And with every impact, the chains flailed, lashing out like a heartbeat echoing with misery and rage.
"WHY?!"
And then—BANG—he drove his forehead into the seal, the sound echoing louder than Kurama's wildest roars.
Blood trickled down from his brow, sliding over his face, tracing the curves of his chin before dripping into the cold, shallow pool beneath him.
Drip... drip... drip...
The chakra chains slowly curled inward, folding around him protectively like a shell, as if the rage itself was trying to shield what little was left of the boy inside.
He slid down the bars, leaving a long, crimson smear behind, and collapsed to his knees.
Still.
Silent.
Defeated.
The space inside the seal fell into stillness once more.
Kurama could only watch, heart shaken.
Minato said nothing—his silence rooted in guilt. He understood now, truly and fully, just how deep the pain ran in his son.
Then, without warning, Menma's external body sent a sharp signal inward.
His senses locked on instantly.
Killing intent.
And not just one source—many. All aimed directly at him. Closing in.
Menma's instincts exploded to life. His fogged mind turned razor-sharp in a breath. ANBU signatures. Chakra he recognized. Coming for him. They wanted to kill him.
They thought he was weak. Too broken to stand.
Then they were fools.
They would see the truth—feel it, bleed from it.
His body surged with power. Chakra roared through him, burning the cold from his limbs and pain from his bones. His spirit ignited like a forge, and he began to rise.
The chains disappeared into nothing, as though they'd never existed.
He barely noticed.
He turned toward Kurama. Toward Minato. Then turned away again, heading for the surface.
Kurama saw it, felt it: the path Menma now walked led to ruin. Not just for him. For everyone.
He had to act.
"HEY! Brat!" Kurama barked.
Menma paused.
He turned, one glowing eye flickering like hellfire. Kurama flinched at the sight—it was the eye of a devil. But he steeled himself.
And said the unthinkable.
"You want to open these gates? You want my friendship? Then listen—I'll teach you sealing techniques."
Menma blinked. His eye widened.
Minato turned in shock.
Kurama crossed his arms and huffed. "Why are you looking at me like that? Let me tell you something! My first Jinchūriki was Mito Uzumaki. The true princess of the Uzumaki Clan. And the second? Kushina Uzumaki. Both masters of sealing. And me? I've been watching—learning—for decades. No other creature in the world knows sealing like I do."
A stunned silence followed.
Then Menma's expression shifted. Hope flickered behind his eyes.
Minato swallowed hard. Kurama was right. If he knew sealing already—then he could've broken the seal at any time. But he hadn't. Why?
Kurama sat back, raising one clawed finger with a smirk.
"I'll teach you sealing arts. In return, you break the seal. And when you're ready—when you open the gates for real—I'll tell you my name."
He grinned. "If you want my friendship, prove you're not an idiot. I don't do 'stupid'."
Menma stared, and then—
He smiled.
For the first time in what felt like forever, something warm bloomed in his chest.
"Don't worry," he said. "I'm a genius the world just hasn't seen yet. Get your notes ready, Teacher Fox. Once I finish with what's coming outside, Snow and I are coming back for class."
He turned to leave, the weight of the impending attack calling him forward. But just before stepping out—
He looked over his shoulder, one last glance toward the man still kneeling in silence.
And maybe—just maybe—Kurama's words had softened some of the hatred, just enough for this.
"...Goodbye, Fourth Hokage."
Minato blinked. The words hit him like sunlight after years of rain.
He smiled faintly, eyes full of sorrow and something close to peace.
As Menma's spirit stepped beyond the seal, Minato's image began to fade, the last remnants of his chakra dissolving into the air.
He watched the spot where his son had stood, his final thought unspoken but echoing in his heart: Be happy... somehow, be free.
Kurama, watching all this, chuckled to himself.
"I've changed," he muttered with a scoff, almost laughing. "What a ridiculous thing…"
He glanced out toward the waking world—and, in secret, did something quietly, something Menma would never expect.
Something that would one day leave the boy with his jaw on the ground in disbelief...
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