The Sealing Team knew their history.
Six years ago, during the Nine-Tails attack, Minato Namikaze had performed the impossible under conditions that should have killed him long before he finished. The Nine-Tails — a force of nature wearing the shape of a giant fox — had been split cleanly in two. The Yang half was sealed into the newborn Uzumaki Naruto, crying in a basket at the edge of a battlefield. The Yin half was taken somewhere the living couldn't follow, swallowed whole by the Dead Demon Consuming Seal, locked away with the Fourth Hokage's own soul as the price of the lock.
That had been the foundational truth they'd all operated under for six years.
Which made what was currently pouring off Uzumaki Naruto deeply, fundamentally wrong.
Yin-attribute energy. Dense enough to be visible. Heavy enough to feel against the skin. Not a trace, not a leak — a flood, so concentrated it made the air itself feel hostile.
"We can't get close at all," one of the Sealing Team muttered, eyes tracking the marked boy as he moved across the ruined rooftop. "He's barely trying. He could fire those slashes any time he wants."
"Is this actually the Nine-Tails? Why hasn't it manifested? No Tailed Beast form, no chakra cloak—"
"Maybe the Yin-Yang separation did something to it. Changed the manifestation somehow—"
"Fall back!" the Sealing Team captain shouted. "Watch your—"
Pfft.
A cluster of slashes landed across his torso in the same instant. He went airborne, hit the wall of a building across the street, and slid down it in a heap.
The marked Naruto watched him land with a look of mild disappointment.
"Boring," he said. "Your fuinjutsu is embarrassing. Minato Namikaze would be ashamed."
The surviving Sealing Team members held their ground at distance, chakra still cycling through their hands, unwilling to retreat but equally unwilling to close in.
"What did you just say — Lord Fourth?"
"Ah." The marked Naruto tilted his head, something flickering in his expression — not regret, just a recalibration of what he'd chosen to share. "Right. You wouldn't know that detail. Minato Namikaze must have left some of his chakra in the seal. Protective measure for the brat. Normally he should've been out cold for a couple of days after what I did to his soul. He was only down for a few hours."
The Sealing Team exchanged a sharp look.
He did something to the boy's soul.
It had been Minato's chakra holding Naruto's consciousness together. That much Jin had already worked out. The Eight Trigrams Seal was designed to contain the Nine-Tails — it said nothing about the Sukuna Template, nothing about cursed techniques, nothing about any of this. So Jin had walked straight through the parts of the seal that didn't apply to him and come out the other side wearing Naruto's face.
Half a day had been enough. More than enough.
Could have killed the brat and taken the body outright. The thought had occurred to Jin and he'd set it aside. It wasn't sentiment — Naruto didn't inspire any of that. It was more that the boy was rare in a way that made immediate disposal wasteful. A jinchuriki who'd grown up under those conditions, with that particular damage baked into his development, carrying all that latent potential... he was a research subject worth maintaining. Something to be observed and used over time, not simply consumed.
Besides. There was no urgency.
Sizzle.
A sound like crackling static, and then the Nine-Tails chakra came loose.
Not the Sukuna techniques — this was something else entirely. Old. Heavy. Wild in a way that felt geological, like the pressure in the earth before something erupts. Jin had opened a gap in the seal deliberately, just wide enough. Just enough to reach through and pull.
The marked Naruto raised one finger.
A black dot formed at the tip. Small. Almost nothing.
"Oh no—"
"That's a Tailed Beast Ball—"
"It's tiny, but it doesn't matter, move—"
BOOM.
The Sealing Team scattered in every direction. The ball itself was about the size of a marble. The explosion it left behind took out half a city block.
Jin looked at the crater with genuine appreciation. The technique was laughably imprecise — you couldn't aim it for anything smaller than a building — but that wasn't the point. The point was the compression ratio. Tailed Beast chakra mixed at precisely 2:8 Yin to Yang, compressed past the threshold of stability, and then released all at once. The math was elegant. The result was total.
"First time using that," the marked Naruto said, mostly to himself. "Not bad."
The Sealing Team reformed at distance, expressions uniformly grim. Whatever theoretical debate had been running — is it the Nine-Tails, is it something else, is the kid under genjutsu — had been resolved. It had used the Nine-Tails chakra. It had fired a Tailed Beast Ball. The signature was undeniable.
The question of what else it was remained open.
Then a figure came down from above.
Fast. Straight. No hesitation in the descent.
Combat uniform. Bo staff in hand. An old face that carried its age the way stone carries weather — present in every line, making it more solid rather than less.
"Sandaime!" The Sealing Team exhaled in collective relief.
Hiruzen Sarutobi landed and took in the scene without a word. An Anbu ninja lay severely injured against a far wall. Villagers down in the street — caught in the shockwaves of techniques not designed to spare bystanders. Buildings demolished. The marked Naruto standing in the middle of it all, six years old, looking back at the Third Hokage with the composed expression of someone twice his height and ten times his age.
The Nine-Tails went berserk. That had been his first instinct when the alert came. That was always the first instinct.
But this wasn't berserk. Whatever this was, it was controlled. Deliberate.
"Hey, old man," the marked Naruto said, almost cheerfully. "What's the play here? Try to seal me? Or skip straight to killing me?" A small pause. "Kill Uzumaki Naruto, I mean."
Hiruzen's expression tightened.
He crossed his fingers and moved through seals at speed — and then there were three of him, each clone solid and grave-faced, chakra signatures identical to the original.
"Sealing Team," he said. "With me."
"Yes!"
"Hahaha!" The marked Naruto threw his head back. "Come on, then! Don't you dare disappoint me!"
What followed, from Naruto's perspective in the memory, was something between a brawl and a lesson.
The marked Naruto didn't use slashes or Tailed Beast Balls. He fought with his hands — with the raw physicality of a six-year-old body being piloted by a consciousness that had no business being that calm in close quarters with Jonin-level ninja. The technique was rough at the edges, the borrowed body occasionally fighting the intent, the coordination not quite seamless. Twice he got grabbed. Both times a short burst of slashes at point-blank range encouraged immediate release, the would-be holder yanking their hand back before losing fingers.
Two of Hiruzen's shadow clones came apart under combined impact. The original held, eyes tracking every movement, reassessing with each exchange.
And then a new group arrived.
The sound of them came first — coordinated footsteps, uniform landing pattern, the particular silence of people who'd trained together long enough to move as a single organism. When they appeared, the red glow was unmistakable even at distance.
Uchiha.
Military Police Force, full deployment, Sharingan already active in every pair of eyes.
"Sandaime!" The captain called out, voice tight.
One of Hiruzen's clones raised a hand before the captain could finish. "Stay back. Maintain the perimeter. No one uses the Sharingan on the Nine-Tails without my direct order."
The Uchiha Police Force went still.
"...Understood."
They fanned out without another word, taking positions at every escape route, Sharingan eyes fixed on the marked Naruto — watching, not engaging.
The marked Naruto landed from a short exchange, knocked a Jonin sideways with a casual elbow, and glanced toward the Uchiha perimeter with something that might have been amusement.
"No Sharingan?" he said. "Smart. You're worried the Uchiha hardliners might try to use me for a coup." He picked at the corner of his mouth with one finger, expression unhurried. "Don't stress about it, old man. I'm not exactly easy to control. When it comes to the soul, I know a few things." He glanced toward the Uchiha captain, then back to Hiruzen. "The Sharingan won't work on me the way you think it will."
The Uchiha nin said nothing. Hiruzen said nothing.
The silence stretched.
Then: "Naruto!" Hiruzen's voice cut through the scene with something different underneath it — not command, but reach. "Naruto, can you hear me?"
In the memory, Naruto felt his throat close.
I hear you. I hear you, Grandpa Sandaime.
"Nice try," the marked Naruto said. He reached up and dug a finger in his ear, expression dry. "Naruto is sleeping. Don't interrupt him."
And then Jin's attention moved.
His eyes swept to the edges of the perimeter, past the Uchiha line, to the rooftops and shadows further back. The figures there were good. Quiet, disciplined, positioned to look like structural features rather than people. A lesser eye wouldn't have caught them.
Jin wasn't a lesser eye.
Root.
New arrivals cut through the air from three directions. These ones he did recognize, even in borrowed memory — the chakra signatures were distinct enough. Kakashi Hatake, moving with that signature loose efficiency. Might Guy, energy barely contained even in approach. Asuma Sarutobi, cigarette lit, the calm of someone who'd seen enough to stop being surprised.
Heavy hitters, called in fast.
The marked Naruto's expression didn't change, but something behind his eyes settled into a sharper focus. He let his arms fall loose at his sides. The cursed energy that had been simmering in the air around him gathered — slow, deliberate, the way a tide pulls back before a wave.
Domain Expansion. The shape of it began to form in the space around his hands, invisible but present, the way a held breath is present.
Jin was ready.
The question was whether any of them were.
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