Six Years Too Long

Chapter 27

STILL no logistics, only plot devices

Third person pov

Minato balances on a line pulled taut.

Have you ever been so scared you can't breathe? Have you ever been so angry, that your lungs expand and contract with all the force of a huffing bull?

Minato has, but never at the same time like now. It feels like two unstoppable forces pulling against one another. Opposite sides of the same coin, and each wants to be flipped right-side up. It leaves his breaths coming out in a stuttering, uneven pattern. The ones that do escape him are great, heaving gusts. The ones that don't strangle up in his throat.

There is no information. Someone thinks they saw his son. They think he was alive, they think he was just unconscious. Minato wants to put hope in that, but the simple fact of the matter is that thinking is not knowing. Nobody has any idea of Minato's son is still breathing, and that drives through his middle like a stake.

Minato cannot tell whether or not fatherhood is abstract or not. In some ways he thinks it is. It's different for everyone, yet the same in so many ways. It does not follow any strict guidelines that Minato can see. It's wild in its abandon, constantly yanking him every which way and giving him no time to even think about getting himself steadied on his own two feet.

He knows a few things for certain. He knows he loves Naruto more than he's ever loved anything. He knows he would do anything for him at the drop of a hat. He knows he fears for him every day, fears for the instability of the village and the world his son will grow up in. He knows he is proud of him, of everything he does no matter how big or small. 

He knows he will break into something unrecognizable if Naruto is not alive. He knows he will become someone else. He knows that, once his rage subsides and the full force of his grief hits, it will shatter him entirely.

(He hopes, begs, it will not come to that.)

The forest his halfway burned through by the time Minato gets there. Considering that his reputation is based around the fact that he's probably the fastest man alive, it's a real testament to the ferocity of the flames. They reflect his anger in their boundlessness, in the way they eat away at everything around them. 

Chakra saturates the air. It's so heavy he can almost taste it. It's like a layer of sticky humidity, and his skin buzzes at the feel of it. It's like pins and needles all over, but Minato doesn't so much as bat an eye at it. All he does is gulp and steel himself, sensing about for any sign of his son as he traverses the burning forest.

The chakra that surrounds him as he does is angry. At first he fears it might be the Kyuubi's. That maybe Naruto did die and this is the nine tails releasing, dissipating to reform miles upon miles away who knows how far in the future. He considers that perhaps the seal was tampered with, that this is what leaked out. But no... no, that doesn't feel right.

Something about this charka is familiar, but it does not bring the same fear the Kyuubi's would. Minato has always been sensitive to different signatures. He's felt the latent energy of more tailed beasts in his time than most have thanks to his active role in the war. He knows what they feel like, knows the heady power they have and the spikes they dig in right to a person's marrow when their aggression starts to leak out.

This is not that. But this is-- almost close. In a rounder sense. Just as angry, maybe even just as dangerous, but it's not... it's not directed at him. He's not sure it's directed at anything at all, the way it's bleeding out in every direction uncontrollably. An automatic response of a sort. It scratches at the back of his mind like a dog wanting in the back door, but Minato can't get the knob to turn no matter how much he pulls.