The gloom vanished from the blond boy's face, replaced by fierce confidence. He gave a hard nod.
"No problem. I swear I'll master this power completely and make it answer to me."
Akira folded his arms and added, his eyes unreadably calm, "And remember this too. Training isn't just about taking power by force. You need to actually try talking to the Nine-Tails."
"Only when the two of you understand each other, only when you reach real trust and perfect coordination, when you can treat it like a comrade you'd trust with your back, the same way you trust Sasuke, will you get the most out of this."
"Look at those two jinchuriki in Kumogakure. The reason they're so ridiculously strong is because they and their Tailed Beasts work together like true partners. A combination like that can crush any ninja fighting alone."
"Don't think of them as nothing but chakra batteries. These things have been around for over a thousand years. They've seen more of the world than you can imagine. Talk to an old veteran like that, and it'll only help you."
Naruto scratched his head, looking thoughtful. "I get what you're saying, but you know what that fox is like. Its attitude is awful..."
Naruto had firsthand experience with the Nine-Tails' habit of jumping straight to threats and violence.
Akira rose slowly to his feet, walked up to Naruto, and looked down at him. "That's where your personal charm comes in. Whether you can win it over and turn it into your biggest supporter is entirely up to you."
"Get ready. I'm going to tear open the Nine-Tails' seal completely. How far you go after that will depend on how much trust you can pull out of it."
The moment those words landed, everyone in the room froze, jaws nearly hitting the floor.
Yamato's face changed instantly. Cold sweat broke out across his skin as he stepped forward to stop him.
"Akira, you can't be serious. Completely undo the seal? If the Nine-Tails loses control, Konoha could be destroyed!"
Akira gave him an easy smile. "Relax, Captain Yamato. If the sky falls, I'll hold it up. Even if that fox tries to turn the world upside down, I can shove it right back where it belongs."
Yamato's mouth twitched helplessly. Looking at the boy standing there with impossible confidence, he still felt uneasy, but he had no real argument.
After all, the last time Naruto lost control, Akira really had solved it like it was nothing.
From the Hokage's chair, Tsunade drew a long breath and said quietly, "Do it. I trust you."
Then even she could no longer stay seated. She stood and moved to Akira's side. She might not believe the Nine-Tails had truly reformed, but she trusted Akira's strength without reservation.
So she chose to stand beside him and be his strongest support.
Sakura and Sai tensed immediately, hands hovering near their weapons, ready for disaster at any moment.
As it turned out, they still hadn't grasped the full extent of Akira's control.
Perfectly calm, Akira stepped in front of Naruto. His hands flew through a series of seals, and then, with a faint glow gathering in his palm, he slammed it against the Eight Trigrams Seal on Naruto's stomach.
"Five Elements Seal: Release."
The jutsu broke apart, and in the next instant a terrifying wave of chakra burst out of Naruto like a red storm.
Tsunade's brow tightened. She looked instinctively at Akira, her palm damp with tension.
But the violent pressure vanished as quickly as it had come.
It was as though an invisible hand had closed around its throat. In the blink of an eye, all the turmoil disappeared, and the room fell into absolute silence.
Naruto blinked and touched his stomach in disbelief. "That's weird. The Nine-Tails really didn't kick up a fuss?"
Sakura and Yamato exchanged looks, their eyes nearly bulging out of their heads. "That's it? It actually worked? That was the Nine-Tails, a walking natural disaster!"
In their minds, the Nine-Tails had always been the embodiment of destruction, malice, and chaos.
Who would've guessed Akira could actually reason with something like that?
The moment Akira broke the seal, two lingering souls that had been hidden deep inside Naruto's mind—Minato Namikaze and Kushina Uzumaki—were awakened by the surge of power and suddenly appeared inside Naruto's mental world.
Naruto's consciousness stood frozen in that sewer-like inner space, completely stunned.
But he wasn't the only one caught off guard. Minato and Kushina looked just as bewildered.
They stared at the enormous cage holding the Nine-Tails, then at the dazed blond boy standing nearby.
When Minato sealed the Nine-Tails all those years ago, he had left behind a final safeguard. He and Kushina had each sealed part of their chakra inside Naruto so they could appear one day and help him at the critical moment when he tried to master the fox's power.
The instant Naruto saw the blond man in the white cloak, his mind went blank.
"You... you're..."
That face was one he knew by heart. He saw it every day on the Hokage Monument. It belonged to the hero who had saved the village, the man Naruto had sworn since childhood to surpass.
For some reason, the sight of him made Naruto's nose sting and tears gather at the corners of his eyes.
Minato looked at Naruto warmly, then glanced over at the Nine-Tails, which was somehow lying there half-asleep and snoring, before asking tentatively, "You're... Naruto, aren't you?"
Naruto walked forward stiffly, his voice shaking. "Yeah... You're the Fourth Hokage? Why are you here?"
At that moment, the Nine-Tails cracked one eye open inside the cage and drawled with pure mockery, "Why else? That's your dead father, idiot. And that red-haired woman next to him is your mother."
Naruto was struck speechless, like he'd been hit by lightning.
"The Fourth Hokage... is my dad?!"
Minato looked at the Nine-Tails' lazy attitude and let out an easy laugh. "Well, Naruto, I have to say, you've grown into quite the young man."
Naruto still looked like he couldn't process what he was hearing. He muttered in a daze, "The Fourth Hokage is my father? That's insane... There's no way... I've got to be dreaming..."
It was even more surreal than a miracle. He had dreamed all his life of knowing who his parents were, but never, not even once, had he imagined the answer would be the man he admired most in the world.
Kushina looked at her son's stunned expression, her heart overflowing. She stepped forward, gently pinched his cheek, and smiled. "Well, looks like you haven't been starving. You've grown up strong."
Looking at the beautiful red-haired woman in front of him, Naruto felt a closeness that ran in his blood. There was no mistaking it. This was the woman who had given him life.
"You... you really are my mom?"
Kushina reached up and touched his head gently. "Of course I am, silly. Looks like you've been taking care of yourself and eating properly too."
The Nine-Tails, sprawled in the cage, rolled its eyes. If Akira hadn't already made his position painfully clear, it wouldn't have sat through this family reunion for anything.
Naruto stood awkwardly between the two of them, stumbling through pieces of his past in broken fragments. But Minato and Kushina listened to every word with complete focus, their eyes full of love and regret.
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