Chapter no.125

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The population of the room had decreased dramatically since thirty minutes the Kiri-nin, Team 11, Tsunade, and Obito having already made their exit, the only ones who remained were Jiraiya, Minato, Kakashi, Kushina, Narumi, and Natsuki. It was not uncommon for these particular people to be in the same room together.

"Well, why don't we give Naruto a little time to think about what we said here...Perhaps he just needs a little time and space to think about everything he just learned. He's probably just a bit overwhelmed after learning how important his role in the world really is." Jiraiya spoke to no one in particular as he strapped the large summoning scroll to his lower back once again.

'Are you really that dense?' were the simultaneous thoughts of Natsuki, Narumi, and Kushina. They seemed to be the only ones in the office to still have their head on straight. Kakashi probably hadn't even been listening to the entire conversation as his nose was still buried in his smut, giggling perversely every few minutes.

Minato seemed to be brought out of his daze as a lightbulb suddenly went off above his head. "Oh, that's right Jiraiya, now that you're free, could you take a look at Natsuki's seal? She won't let me or Kushina look at it for some unknown reason."

Due to Naruto's request in what formerly was the forest just outside of Konoha, Natsuki had not told Minato nor Kushina about what had occurred a week ago, nor would she even let them near her seal.

If any of them were to find any discrepancies in the seal formula on her stomach, they would surely tighten up her seal, which would successfully cut off her connection with Kurama, or the Kyuubi as they would call him. While he may have been very uncooperative ever since he found out about how much she had been abusing his chakra, she wouldn't allow him to be locked up anymore. Kurama seemed to know something behind her Nii-san's surname, she wanted to find out more about why that was, so she would have to work to gain his trust. Cutting the connection and forcing him back into the cage would be going against that.

Not to mention now that she knew that the Bijū were living beings instead of giant masses of chakra who merely caused destruction, Natsuki hated the fact that they were forcibly imprisoned to create jinchūriki for each of the villages. Kurama was merely the victim of an unfortunate fate, he never meant to attack Konoha on the day of their birth, he was being controlled by a dead man for over a century. Perhaps the other Bijū had suffered a similar fate.

Though Naruto did say that she could relay what happened to Narumi, due to the fact that she was just as involved as they were, but she just didn't know when she would get the opportunity to do so without their parents overhearing. Nor did she know if her sister would keep the information from their parents. She remembered just what would happen if they were to find out. She really didn't want her brother to see her as an enemy, perhaps that would be enough to make Narumi understand how serious this was as well.

"Nope! He's not coming near my seal either!" Natsuki exclaimed as she crossed her forearms into a 'X' shape and held them out just in front of her chest.

Narumi raised and eyebrow at her twin sister's attitude. She noticed that she had refused to let anyone near her seal a few times this week already. Normally they just complied when their parents or Jiraiya wanted to inspect if the seal was still holding properly. Perhaps it had to do with what had happened with Nawaki's seal. Whatever it was, she would make sure to ask her sister at a later time, but for now she would remain quiet.

"Natsuki, I don't understand why you're acting like this. You've never had a problem before when we wanted to study the seal." Minato said, quite confused at his daughter's actions. They really needed to get a look at her seal to make sure that it was still holding properly, they couldn't let whatever had happened to Nawaki happen to her as well. Now that he thought about it, the exact cause of why and how the Kyuubi's chakra had broken through his seal were still a mystery.

"That was before everything that happened with Nawaki's seal! You think I'm gonna let any of you near my seal after the fine mess you've caused!?" Natsuki yelled back at Minato. She needed to play the part of the scared little girl for now...though a lot of what she was saying was actually true.

Now a majority of the room was confused. What did they have to do with what happened to Nawaki? None of them had tampered with the seal or even looked at it since after the second stage of the chūnin exams. Perhaps Orochimaru did something to the seal as well when their team encountered him in the forest of death.

"What are you talking about Natsuki-chan? None of us did anything to alter the seal, so there's no way that any of us could have been responsible for what happened to Nawaki." Kushina tried to calm her daughter down, but it seemed to have the opposite effect as she was now even more worked up than before.

"You mean the three of you really have no idea why the Kyuubi was able to escape Nawaki's seal?" Natsuki asked them rhetorically. She almost called the Kyuubi, Kurama right in front of them. If she had done so, there would be far more explaining to do than why he was able to escape from the seal he was confined to.

She received three nods of the head in the negative, while Narumi and Kakashi now only stared on curiously.

"Sandaime-sama may have been the one who sealed the Kyuubi inside of us, but he did so according to the seal formulas that you had prepared in advance and already placed on the three of us, so he can't be blamed for the current situation." Natsuki felt as if she was lecturing children with how clueless her parents and Jiraiya looked at the moment. "What do you think happens when you separate yin and yang, oh great fūinjutsu masters?"

The eyes of the three fūinjutsu experts in the room widened to epic proportions. How could they not have realized such a basic principle for so long?

"I see you finally understand what happened to Nawaki's and my seal. Yin and yang are not meant to be separated, they need to be together to keep the balance. It's the most basic principle of this world, not limited to only fūinjutsu. When the two are separated for long enough, they will eventually try to find their way back to each other. It just so happened that they found their home inside of me."

Needless to say that everyone still present in the room was stunned into silence, though the three men in the room had to suppress a shiver from running down their spine at the appearance of the famous Uzumaki temper.

Having said everything that she wanted to, Natsuki breathed a sigh of relief and hopped of the couch to walk out the door. Narumi followed not long after her sister, not wanting to be left in the room when her parents were going to be in that kind of state.

Minato and Kushina had fallen to their knees and were now holding onto each other tightly while sobbing hysterically. They had ruined not just Naruto's life during his childhood, but also Nawaki's and possibly Natsuki's due to their lack of foresight. Why hadn't they thought of the consequences of separating the two halves of the Kyuubi, it was one of the basic principles of fūinjutsu, which they claimed to be masters at. How could they have screwed up so badly?

With how their children had turned out and all the mistakes they had made, were they even meant to be parents?

Akatsuki Hideout - Unknown Location

A large amount of spectral figures, numbering into the double digits, flickered to life around a large, round table, centered in the middle of an underground cavern. It could not be determined where exactly they were, though if one looked around, they would see a large, demonic entity with a decayed appearance and a number of spike-like protrusions on its back. This was the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path, an entity only capable of being summoned by one possessing the Rinnegan. The statue was the only thing in the cavern besides the table and chairs.