Chapter 2
When Minato woke up in the hospital, Jiraiya was by his side. He was wearing a look that Minato had only seen once before: when Dekai died, back when they were team six. They’d run for three days straight to get Dekai to the hospital on time, but he’d died in surgery only hours after they reached their destination, too little too late.
The bright lights of the hospital room hurt Minato’s eyes.
“I got your toad, kid,” Jiraiya said, his voice breaking in a way that Minato wasn’t used to.
He was referring to the toad Minato sent him with the key to his daughter’s seal. Minato remembered doing that. It was important for someone to have the key if he died.
“He said you used the shiki fuujin and-. How are you alive?” Jiraiya asked. Minato thought he saw tears in the man’s eyes.
It took a moment for Minato to answer. There was no clock in the room to tell the passage of time, but the empty seconds stretched.
“I don’t know,” he finally admitted. “I was prepared to die. I should have died.”
The wound dressing around Minato’s ribs itched.
“If all of my students had died before the age of 25… Well, I wouldn’t have been a very good sensei, would I?” Jiraiya asked.
Minato didn’t answer. That wasn’t the kind of question that merited an answer.
“What I’m trying to say is, I’m glad you’re alive,” Jiraiya continued after an awkward pause. “And I’d hug you if you hadn’t just gone through one hell of a surgery.”
Minato belatedly noticed that there was an IV and heart monitor hooked up to him.
“Thanks,” Minato said, because that was the sort of answer you were supposed to give. It was a soulless, rote thanks.
“Well,” Jiraiya said, allergic to awkwardness. “Let’s tell the doctors you’re awake, eh?” He stood up from his uncomfortable-looking chair.
It didn’t take long for him to find someone to come in and check on him. Apparently, Minato’s wounds were already completely gone thanks to the Ninetails’ healing factor. If he had been a regular person, it would have taken him weeks to recover, if he would have survived long enough to make it to the hospital at all. The doctors suggested removing all of Minato’s now useless bloody wound dressings, but Minato thought that could wait. What was important right now was seeing his daughter. Luckily, his doctors obliged.
“We just got her to eat,” the nurse wheeling her in said, trying to make conversation. It was hard to say whether she was blind to the mood of the room, or perhaps making an effort to improve it. “You’ve got a spirited little one.”
Tears pooled in Minato’s eyes at the sight of his daughter. She had whisker-marks on her cheeks, which he hadn’t expected. Little blond tufts of hair were already visible on her head. Her unfocused eyes were the same color as Minato’s, but their shape was all Kushina.
Minato broke down into tears. Kushina might be gone, but their baby was safe. It was all for her.
Minato reached out to pick her up, only to realize his arm was in a cast. The nurse noticed what he was trying to do and placed her on his chest in his stead. Minato scarcely dared to breathe as he gently placed his free hand on her back, holding her ridiculously small body. He could feel a tiny ball of chakra in her. Surprisingly it leaned heavily toward yin, perhaps to balance the Nintails’ yang.
“Do you have a name for her?” Jiraiya asked.
“Kana,” Minato whispered, scared that a louder voice might hurt her ears. “It was Kushina’s mother’s name. It’s a very Uzumaki name.”
That was important, now that the Uzumaki were gone. Kushina had planned to teach Kana all the Uzumaki stories and hiden techniques, but that wasn’t possible any more. The last voice that could pass on the oral traditions was silenced.
Jiraiya nodded. “Kana’s a good name,” he said.
They sat in silence, pondering. Perhaps Minato could sponsor a mission to Uzushio to see if there was anything there to give Kana that hadn’t already been found by scavengers… If there wasn’t anything, at least he could pass down his own techniques... And he did know bits and pieces of the Uzumaki sealing style…
Soon Kana fell asleep, and still drowsy from healing, Minato was quick to follow.
—
Marcille was going to die of boredom. Don’t get her wrong, she was glad to be alive and out of the void, but did she have to be in the body of a baby of all things?
When she first woke up, Marcille had thought she was a ghost possessing the baby that was going to be sacrificed, but that would have made far too much sense. No, she experienced hunger, her fragile skin was pink and full of flowing blood, and most damningly of all, people didn’t scream and run away from her.
Somehow, she had taken over the body of the sacrifice baby while it was still alive. Perhaps the sacrifice spell violently tore out the baby’s soul, conveniently leaving a soulless body behind for her to crawl into like a necromantic hermit crab? Did Marcille’s presence botch the ritual somehow? She had no idea. Whatever the case was, she felt a bit guilty about being in the body of the baby, when really the baby should have been in the body of the baby instead.
Mostly, though, she felt bored. The problem was that babies couldn’t really do much. She was so young she could barely turn her head yet, and she was pretty sure that meant she was a literal newborn. That meant it would be like a decade until she could walk or talk again, let alone do something interesting! There was this other baby that was constantly around her, Sasuke, who could at least lift his head and grab at objects, and Marcille was jealous of his freedom. She realized that being jealous of a baby was stupid, but this whole situation was stupid in the first place, so forgive her if she had some stupid emotions about it!
Since the physical world was so horrible, Marcille spent a lot of time in her mindscape, where she thankfully still took the form of her normal adult self. Unfortunately, her gorgeous, meticulously organized mental library looked like a tornado had run through it. Books were strewn everywhere, most of the shelves were in pieces, and Marcille wanted to scream in frustration. Luckily she was a baby, so that was allowed. She was pretty sure the mess was a natural consequence of being scrambled by the void between worlds, but finding all her books and putting them back where they belong was going to be so tedious. How fortunate that she was a baby and didn’t have literally anything more interesting to do...
There was one thing in her mindscape that was definitely not a natural consequence of the void, however: the giant fox monster. Yes, there had been a fox monster rampaging when she ended up in this body, but why the hell was it in here with her? Was it supposed to be here? Was the ritual supposed to give this fox a body, but Marcille stole it out from under its nose? Whatever the case was, the damned thing’s massive cage took up the entire east wing of the library! Marcille could see it sitting on a bunch of her books! Her painstakingly crafted mental spellbooks, no better than poor quality bedding… The thing refused to speak to her, let alone cooperate and pass books to her side of the bars, so almost a third of Marcille’s collection was probably lost to her forever. For obvious self-preservation reasons she wasn’t about to venture into its cage to try to retrieve anything herself – the magic wafting off of the thing felt corrosive.
In between organizing mental books, dumbly staring at the physical world around her and humiliating diaper changes, Marcille wondered a lot. She wondered if she was in the East, since the language of these people sounded similar to Shuro’s, or if she was in a different world altogether. She wondered who sent her into the void, and if Laios and the others were alive or sane. Mostly, though, she wondered if Falin was okay. Marcille was positive that Falin had been in this world fighting against the terrifying soul-eater ghost, but she hadn’t seen her a single time since then. Would Marcille even be able to see her, since she was probably also detached from reality? Was Falin looking for her? Would Falin be able to tell that it was Marcille’s soul inside the infant “Kana”? The questions were endless, and Marcille had no way to find answers.
For now, she was feeling hungry, so she cried.