Ryu declared, "I have decided..." he said. "I will call this [Flying Raijin]."
The lightning thread between Ryu and the golden anchor flickered before disappearing.
Ryu drew in a breath and let it out as nothing dangerous happened.
Ryu thought, "It worked. I felt pain but considering the alternative, it was okay."
Ryu had made the working principle on the fly and did the simulations in his head and tested the theorised jutsu in this virtual environment.
His [Lightning Style – Body Flicker] was a dangerous jutsu to test in real life. It is no coincidence only the Raikage can do it. Even if one can perform the jutsu, it does not guarantee their safety. Ryu's version was severely lacking but still dangerous. Ryu had applied the principles of Raikage's assistant Mabui and used external lightning as a pull medium to increase the speed of his movements. And for the added dangers of high-speed movement and external lightning, Ryu used Yin-Yang Body Augmentation, calling it his [Golden Aura].
*
In the separate space inside Naruto's mindscape, Minato went completely still.
Then he said, "He copied the name from my jutsu."
Kushina folded her arms. "It suits his jutsu better than yours."
Minato looked at her. "That is … unfair. My jutsu is also fitting for this cool name."
"Is it?" Kushina asked. "His is lightning-based. Yours is space-time ninjutsu. If anyone here has the stronger claim to the name [Flying Raijin], it is the child turning himself into a lightning bolt."
Minato almost smiled and agreed. "In that regard, you are right; the name is more fitting for his jutsu."
Kushina nodded once. "I know. "
"But not for that reason alone." Minato kept his eyes on the drifting golden anchors around Ryu. "Do you know who named my signature jutsu when Lord Second first created it?"
Kushina asked, "It was not Lord Second?"
Minato shook his head. "No, it was not him. When Lord Third gave me the jutsu to try, he warned me about its risks and how difficult it is to master. The chances of compatibility were extremely rare. Then he told me the history of [Flying Raijin]. The one who helped Lady Mito and Lord Second develop it... the one who gave it its name... was Lady Mito's guard."
Kushina searched her memory for a moment. Then the memory clicked into place.
"... Old Man Dan?"
"Yes," Minato said. "Dan Hamura."
Kushina looked down again, properly this time.
"This kid's name is Ryu Hamura," Kushina said, the realisation settling in. "He must be related to old man Dan."
Both of them looked at Ryu, who was thinking about his recent jutsu and making further thoughts about enhancement.
Minato said, "Dan was a fuinjutsu grandmaster. He must have taught the boy." He watched Ryu for another moment. "He still looks academy-aged, and yet everything he is doing belongs several ranks above that."
Kushina said nothing.
*
Ryu rolled one shoulder and looked up at the Nine-Tails.
"I should thank you," he said.
The fox's red eyes narrowed. "For what?"
"For the opportunity," Ryu spread one hand. "I grow by actual combat. The thrill and adrenaline help me think out of the box with much greater creativity than normal. And this place, where I do not have a real physical body, gives a wonderful opportunity for me to try new dangerous jutsu concepts that I cannot in real life." He smiled. "So thank you."
The fox did not move. No one has ever thanked it before. The Nine-Tails blinked, surprised by Ryu's gratitude.
Then Ryu added, "Now, can we talk like civilised people and leave what was done behind us? I have expressed my anger in response to your attempt to hurt Naruto. You should also move a step ahead."
For a moment, even the mindscape seemed to pause.
The fox stared at him in silence, then said, "It has been a millennium since someone spoke to me like a proper person."
Ryu smiled.
"In the past, humans usually ran away from me after seeing me. Those who did not only approached me for power," the fox said. "Or because they think I can grant wishes. Or because they want to control me."
Ryu laughed. "Those stupid people. They thought you were some kind of wish-granting genie." He shook his head once. "Humanity keeps disappointing me."
A tail slammed down. Lightning flashed. The water erupted where Ryu had been standing. Spray exploded upward in a dark wall.
Ryu was taken away by [Flying Raijin] and later appeared next to one of the anchors a few metres away, whole. He sighed and rubbed his forehead.
"I am trying to have a conversation," he said. "Will you stop trying to kill me?"
"You started this fight."
"Come on," Ryu said. He glanced up with mild annoyance. "I was protecting my little brother."
Above, Minato's mouth curved anyway. Kushina's eyes softened at the ease with which Ryu said it. There was no hesitation in him. Ryu meant it.
He pointed lightly toward the Fox. "Here is the offer. If you promise to leave Naruto alone, I will leave too."
Then he paused.
"Actually, I take that back. If you leave him alone, I will come down here and talk to you. Properly. I will treat you like a normal person, or a being, or a beast—whatever you call yourself."
The fox's face twitched at the audacity of the boy. It had never encountered someone willing to negotiate with it in such a manner before.
Minato and Kushina exchanged surprised glances, impressed by Ryu's boldness.
"How does that sound?" Ryu asked. "You said yourself it has been a thousand years since anyone spoke to you without wanting something. I don't know how you perceive the flow of time but that is miserable and lonely by human standards."
The Fox gave a short, derisive laugh. "You are delusional if you think I am lonely."
"Immortality can be a bitch in that regard," Ryu said, entirely unfazed. "Either you find something interesting to do, or eternity turns into hell. Did any of your previous jinchuriki ever just listen to you? Ever ask what you thought? What you knew?"
The Nine-Tails said nothing.
Ryu's gaze sharpened.
"No one ever did, did they?" he said. "Amazing. If it were me, I would have asked questions until your ears bled. History, the Sage, Madara, and Hashirama. Anything worth knowing." He spread his hands. "Those previous hosts never stopped to think what it meant to have a being as old as the ninjutsu itself sealed inside them. That level of wasted opportunity is almost offensive."
The fox went still.
Kushina stared at Ryu, a mixture of shock and realisation crossing her face.
It had been called many things by humans. Monster. Weapon. Disaster. Divine being. Curse. But not that. Never that. No one had looked at him and seen him as a sentient being, a knowledge keeper. That hit harder than the taunts had.
Ryu tilted his head. "I guess the current one is not far ahead of them. He is a pretty stupid kid..." The corner of Kushina's mouth twitched hearing Ryu call Naruto stupid.
Ryu continued, "But he is my brother now. I will make sure he does better than his predecessors. So I want you to treat him better too."
*
Hearing that, Kushina thought about the day she became a jinchuriki.
What Ryu said was true. She had never thought to talk to the fox.
Not once.
She had carried him for years. She had lived with the burden of the seal and endured the weight of what it meant to be a jinchuriki. Anyone else would be crushed under this fate but even before she became a jinchuriki, she had always had Minato. Before loneliness could hollow something out inside her, Minato had filled that space simply by being there. She had never needed to search inward for company.
So she never had.
Her seal in particular had been strong. Precise. Ruthless. The fox was not only caged, it was bound inhumanely. She had built it that way on purpose.
And in doing so, she had made the confinement more rigorous, more bound, and more inhuman than it ever needed to be.
"Minato..." Her voice tightened.
He looked at her and saw the change at once.
"Since I had you," she said, staring down at the fox she had once carried, "I never bothered with him, thinking if it ever gets loose, I may lose you. I kept making the seal better, tighter, and harsher, and I never once thought to treat him like..." She swallowed. "Like a person."
Minato's hand closed gently around hers. "You are not the only one at fault. He never tried to speak to you either."
Kushina shook her head. "That does not excuse me." Her fingers tightened around his. "Maybe if I had tried... even once... maybe he would not have tried to kill my baby boy that day." Her voice dropped lower. "It's my fault."
*
The fox laughed again mockingly, this time with a hint of amusement.
"You are a funny child to demand anything from me," Fox then said.
Ryu grinned. "From crazy to funny. That is a welcome transition. We have come a long way." He spread his arms. "So then, truce?"
The fox answered by lashing out at the golden anchors instead.
The tail tore through the air with terrifying speed. First, one sphere shattered, followed by another breaking apart, and finally, a third burst into a fading spray of gold.
Ryu's eyes flicked to the survivors and he willed them back at once, pulling them farther away from the fox's reach. The remaining constructs scattered through the wide space, expanding the battlefield.
The Nine-Tails bared its teeth. "If those chakra spheres are not around me, you cannot reach me with that speed again."
Ryu considered that for half a second. "That is true."
His gaze slid toward the surviving anchors. He thought, "Thought-triggered control works, but active control eats attention. They need autonomous evasion… I will work on it later."
"For now," Ryu said, "I can solve the problem another way."
He shaped a new sphere in his palm—not an anchor this time, but a denser mass of compressed chakra. He closed his fingers around it like a baseball. Then he shifted his stance, planting one foot, rotating his shoulder, and loading chakra through his body with the pure technique of Senju-style taijutsu.
He threw it as fast as he could.
"[Meteor Cannon]!" Ryu shouted at the same time.
The meteor cannon blazed past the fox's face; he barely dodged it by turning his neck on time. For a fraction of a second, it looked like a miss.
The fox smiled. Ryu's smile made the fox's smile fade.
Then an anchor slid into the attack's path of [Meteor Cannon], and when it struck the anchor, the stored chakra in the anchor redirected the shot. A second anchor caught it after that. Then a third.
The anchors were not just redirecting the [Meteor Cannon], but it was absorbing the stored chakra from the anchors on impact, using it to fuel its own acceleration before bouncing off toward the next point like a lethal ping-pong ball.
After the last redirection, the [Meteor Cannon] slammed into the back of the Fox's head.
The beast's face dipped forward. The fox blinked in sheer surprise. Ryu, meanwhile, looked delighted.
A/N:
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