"Are you alright?" Minato asked, his brow furrowing with concern as he took in the devastation surrounding them. The once-featureless mindscape had been transformed into a battlefield, bearing the scars of the Nine-Tails' destructive power.
"I'm fine," Kushina assured him with a small smile, her voice steady despite the intensity of her recent confrontation. Though subduing the Nine-Tails was far from simple, the bijuu couldn't easily harm her within this inner realm that was, ultimately, an extension of her own consciousness.
"The Fourth Hokage!"
The Nine-Tails' roar reverberated through the damaged spiritual space, its voice thick with hatred and recognition. Incensed by Minato's apparent indifference to its presence, the fox's crimson eyes blazed with renewed fury as it began gathering chakra once more. The ominous swirl of red and blue energy started condensing before its massive jaws, particles of destructive power coalescing into another Tailed Beast Ball.
In a flash of golden light, Minato—who had been standing beside Kushina just a heartbeat earlier—suddenly materialized beneath the Nine-Tails' enormous body. From the bijuu's perspective, the human was no larger than an insect, a seemingly insignificant threat.
Yet in the palm of Minato's right hand, a sphere of concentrated chakra had begun to form, swirling with increasing intensity.
"Boom!"
In the next instant, Minato's fully condensed attack struck the Nine-Tails with devastating force. The resulting explosion created a shockwave that sent the massive fox reeling backward, the partially formed Tailed Beast Ball in its mouth dissipating into scattered particles of chakra.
As the dust cleared, the Nine-Tails lay sprawled on the ground, its eyes wide with disbelief and a hint of fear as it watched Minato return to Kushina's side with a single graceful leap.
"A Tailed Beast Ball!" the Kyuubi growled, its voice tinged with both outrage and incredulity. "Damn humans... they've actually mastered it!"
The fox had sensed this distinctive chakra signature once before, when Minato had demonstrated the technique to Kushina. It recognized that Minato somehow possessed chakra remarkably similar to its own, but seeing a human successfully execute an attack that should only be possible for a tailed beast or a perfect jinchūriki was still profoundly disturbing to the ancient entity.
"This is your mindscape," Minato told Kushina, his expression serious as he kept his eyes fixed on the temporarily stunned Nine-Tails. "I can't maintain my presence here for long. We need to move quickly!"
The power of the Tailed Beast Ball he had just unleashed was formidable enough that even the Third Raikage, renowned throughout the ninja world for his legendary defensive capabilities, would have sustained significant damage from such an attack. This served as yet another reminder of the Nine-Tails' terrifying power—even in its currently divided state.
Kushina nodded in understanding. She and Minato exchanged a brief glance, a wordless communication born of years fighting alongside one another. In perfect synchronization, they launched themselves toward the Nine-Tails, closing the distance with extraordinary speed.
The fox's eyes trembled with mounting apprehension. Facing Kushina and Minato together placed it at a severe disadvantage, even with its immense power. However, surrender was not in its nature. With a sudden forward motion, the Nine-Tails lashed out with its tails—nine massive appendages that whipped through the air like colossal serpents, each aimed with deadly precision at the approaching shinobi.
"Adamantine Sealing Chains!" Kushina called out, her voice resonating with authority as she released the full extent of her chakra reserves.
Dozens of golden chains erupted from her back, each link glowing with the distinctive energy of her Uzumaki bloodline. They shot forward with unerring accuracy, wrapping around all nine of the fox's thrashing tails and binding them with an audible clank of metaphysical metal.
The Nine-Tails clenched its jaw, muscles tensing as it prepared to break free from Kushina's restraints through sheer brute force.
"Now!" Minato called out, simultaneously launching a specially marked kunai high into the air above the restrained bijuu.
In a yellow flash, Minato teleported to the kunai's position, his arm already raised as he appeared suspended above the Nine-Tails. The familiar azure glow of chakra bloomed in his palm, rapidly expanding into a spiraling sphere that grew until it resembled a miniature sun.
"You think you can subdue me with such a simple trick?" the Nine-Tails taunted, a harsh laugh escaping its massive jaws. It understood the fundamental limitation they faced—within this spiritual space, neither Kushina nor Minato could employ conventional sealing techniques to suppress it, as their goal was to control its power rather than simply contain it.
The fox had also calculated that if Minato released another Tailed Beast Ball at this proximity, the resulting explosion might damage Kushina or the chakra constructs she was using to maintain control over the bijuu. Even if she escaped unharmed, the power she was channeling to suppress the Nine-Tails would inevitably be disrupted.
This meant Minato and Kushina could only engage in a direct contest of raw strength—precisely the type of confrontation where Minato's legendary speed, so feared throughout the ninja world, offered the least advantage.
"Is that so?" Minato replied softly, his expression serene despite the tension of the moment.
Around the already massive Rasengan suspended above his palm, new flickers of chakra began to manifest. The ambient energy pulsed and shimmered, then abruptly condensed into dozens of equally large Rasengan spheres, each one rotating with perfectly controlled intensity.
"Massive Rasengan Barrage!"
"BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!"
The cascade of enormous spiraling chakra spheres slammed into the Nine-Tails' head in rapid succession. Even with its tremendous durability, the fox could not withstand such concentrated force. Its enormous body crashed downward under the relentless assault, temporarily stunned but crucially not harming Kushina or disrupting her chains.
"Heh," Kushina couldn't suppress a slight smirk at hearing Minato's name for the technique—always so earnest and literal with his jutsu terminology.
"Now's our chance!" Minato called out, his voice cutting through her momentary amusement.
Kushina nodded sharply, her expression immediately returning to one of intense focus. Behind her, light and shadow briefly coalesced into a silhouette that resembled her dark counterpart—but now, instead of standing in opposition, this aspect of herself had fully integrated with her consciousness, lending its strength to her purpose.
"Multiple Shadow Clone Technique!"
Her hands formed the distinctive cross seal, and in an instant, hundreds of perfect replicas of Kushina materialized throughout the mindscape. With coordinated purpose, these shadow clones surged toward the subdued Nine-Tails, each one latching onto the fox's immense form and beginning to extract a tangible strand of its chakra.
"Together!" the original Kushina commanded. "Pull out its chakra!"
The hundreds of shadow clones moved in perfect unison, each drawing a brilliant thread of energy from the Nine-Tails' form.
"How utterly detestable!" the Nine-Tails snarled, feeling its power being systematically extracted but unable to resist effectively while pinned down by Minato's attack. It thrashed against its constraints, but to no avail.
As the process continued, Kushina observed with growing concern that the initially azure chakra she had begun extracting from the Nine-Tails was gradually changing color—a scarlet tinge spreading through the energy like blood in water, eventually dyeing the entire chakra a deep crimson.
"The Nine-Tails' hatred runs even deeper than I anticipated!" Kushina realized, gritting her teeth as she channeled every ounce of her own chakra to compete with the fox's malevolent energy.
Though the overwhelming hatred contained within the Nine-Tails' chakra could not penetrate Kushina's newly harmonized emotional state, the intense competition between their energies triggered something unexpected. A series of vivid images suddenly materialized in Kushina's mind—not her own memories, but something far more ancient.
She found herself witnessing a devastated battlefield of unimaginable scale. Kushina gasped in horror at the panorama of destruction that stretched beyond the horizon. The very geography of the land had been forcibly reshaped by powers beyond human comprehension—mountains reduced to rubble, forests obliterated, and riverbeds altered from their natural courses.
This wasn't the aftermath of any war recorded in shinobi history. The level of devastation suggested forces far beyond even the most powerful ninja techniques.
In the center of this ruined landscape stood a familiar figure—the Nine-Tailed Fox, but not as Kushina knew it. This version of the fox appeared even more massive, its chakra more dense and potent than what she had experienced. Most strikingly, the bijuu was restrained by an enormous wooden dragon that coiled around its body, its serpentine form seemingly alive as it tightened its grip on the struggling fox.
"This is..." Kushina's face registered shock and awe as the implications of what she was witnessing began to dawn on her.
Not far from where the Nine-Tails lay bound, an immense body of water stretched toward the horizon—once a tranquil sea, now violently transformed. The earth beneath it had been torn asunder, creating a massive displacement that forced the waters to redirect into a thundering waterfall of unprecedented scale.
At the base of this cataclysmic waterfall, explosive bursts of light and energy flashed with blinding intensity, suggesting a battle of godlike proportions taking place just beyond her field of vision.
But Kushina's attention remained fixed on what was happening immediately before her. Approaching the restrained Nine-Tails was a solitary figure—a woman moving with deliberate grace and unflinching resolve.
As the woman drew closer, Kushina could discern her features more clearly. She possessed an elegant, refined beauty with delicate features and a striking purple diamond-shaped mark adorning her forehead. Her bearing suggested both nobility and tremendous inner strength.
What captivated Kushina most powerfully, however, was the woman's hair—long, vibrant red tresses tied meticulously into buns on either side of her head. Though the hairstyle differed dramatically from her own and the woman's facial features bore little resemblance to the photographs Kushina had seen, there was no mistaking the distinctive Uzumaki crimson that they shared.
"Lady Mito!" Kushina whispered in astonishment, recognizing the first jinchūriki of the Nine-Tails—wife of the First Hokage, Hashirama Senju, and more personally significant to Kushina, her husband's grandmother.
She was witnessing nothing less than the original sealing of the Nine-Tails—a pivotal moment in shinobi history that had occurred long before her birth, now revealed to her through the bijuu's own memories.