" I've been watching

I've been waiting

In the shadows for my time

I've been searching

I've been living

For tomorrows all my life"

Large red eyes opened, staring out past the walls of the cage that kept their owner hidden away from the world. Their gaze was full of malice and malevolence, though a tiny flicker of something else was hidden within. Such was the life of the once-great Kyuubi. Bound within the very souls of those that once protected him, locked away from the real world to spend over a hundred years in isolation. At least now he wasn't bound with chain piercing his body, or those cursed torii gates pinning him down. Here he could move, though not much.

Something had happened to disturb his slumber again, a regular occurrence since that day with the child. He remembered it well, the frail wisp of a girl staring at him with a blank expression and seeming undaunted by the power he exuded. Then her father showing up to fix the damage to the seal, and damn that worthless human to the pits of hell. All he had wanted was to get free and return to the place that had been his home since the passing of his creator, Uzu. Perhaps it was odd that a creature of fire like him was at peace in a place surrounded by water, but the sheer complexity of the whirling tides was something that had kept him occupied for centuries at a time.

The bijuu shook his head to clear his memories as he wondered what had happened to his container. He wasn't truly concerned, but boredom will make almost anything interesting. Plus, there was something about this girl, something that unnerved even him. He could still remember looking into her eyes when they first had met.

The dank sewer of Naruto's mindscape was silent aside from the occasional echoing drip of water. Even that sound felt muted though, as if there was a layer of cotton over reality. This peace was disturbed by the sound of a body hitting water, distorting the smooth surface that covered the ground. Behind a massive set of barred gates, a single crimson and black eye opened slowly to regard the disturbance.

Sitting up in the water was a naked human child, a female. She looked around in confusion at the sudden change in her surroundings. She looked around slowly, her purple eyes glimmering in the light slightly. With hesitant motions, she stood up after she figured that she was alone, having made the one mistake that almost everyone does: she didn't look up.

The girl began to wander about, going down the tunnels until they ended, always coming back to the main chamber with the massive gates adorning one side. She stares at them in confusion, unable to figure out why someone would make a gate with opening so big anyone could walk through it easily. With a shrug, she walks to the bars, figuring that wherever she was, it was the only place to go.

Right as she was preparing to cross through the gates, the Kyuubi finally lost its hold over the urge to attack her, and lashed out, a single heavy claw maneuvering through the bars to slash the front of her body open. The girl let out a pain and terror-filled scream as her body was flung back by the force of the blow. Her flight was interrupted though as she impacted a body, strong arms moving to catch and hold her still.

Trembling and gasping, she looked up into a pair of bright blue eyes that shone with concern for her. The owner of the eyes smiled comfortingly as he set her down gently. She didn't even realize that the horrendous wound she had received from the Kyuubi had vanished, along with the blood that had come from it.

The man that had caught her took on a confused look as he realized two things. The first was that she was extremely young, far younger than she should ever be for the failsafe in the seal to kick in and draw out the portion of his chakra and soul that he had bound within the making of it. The second was that she was not disguised by the seal her mother had created for her.

"Well now, what are you doing here? You're far too young to be trying to use the Kyuubi's power at a point where the seal would be damaged, and what happened to the transformation seal your mother put on you?"

"Y-you knew my mother?" The girl could barely speak at first as emotions raged through her mind. "Who was she, who was my father, why did they abandon me, why does everyone hate me? Am I a bad person?"

The man frowned at her questions. He had left very specific instructions with Hiruzen about what was to happen with his daughter. She was to be raised by her godparents, in his estate. So why didn't she know who he was? He brushed those thoughts aside and smiled softly at her.

"Of course I knew your mother, she was my wife. I am your father, or at least an imprint left by him when he died sealing the Kyuubi into you."

The girl blinked several time, her eyes growing wet with unshed tears as she realized what his words meant. "F-father?"

He was unable to do more than smile encouragingly and nod before he was struck by the girl as she jumped at him, clinging to him with all of her strength as she began to sob uncontrollably. He wrapped his arms around her to pat her back comfortingly as she cried, barely keeping his own tears and anger under check. Something had seriously gone wrong after he died. When she finally calmed down he began talking to her, giving her his name first before carefully explaining things to her. While doing so, he carefully teased information from her about her life, which only fueled his anger the more he heard.

Unknown to the both of them, the Kyuubi was smirking behind the gates that kept it locked away. It had been carefully working on adding to the chakra it had managed to push into the girl, giving her more and more of the raw power that comprised its being. Unlike what would normally happen if she drew upon the fell beast's power, this chakra did not go through the seal's complex arrays. It was completely unchecked.

The two talked for hours, the time passing faster than the blinking of an eye to the outside world. He had told her everything he could think of about her mother and himself, how they grew up, their lives as ninja, and how they fell in love. Right as he finished explaining about the Kyuubi, and that her mother was the second jinchuuriki of the beast, said bijuu suddenly began to laugh. The sound was deep and malevolent, filled with dark mirth. Both father and daughter looked to the gates, cerulean and amethyst eyes widening as the seal over the gates dissolved away.

Minato cursed as he stood up. He knew what had happened, his mind clicking over facts faster than any computer ever could. He looks down at the girl with a thoughtful expression before doing something that he wouldn't dare to do under normal circumstances even with a Yamanaka helping him. These, however, were far from normal circumstances. He put his hand on her forehead and focused on the knowledge of the jutsu that had made him such a feared person on the battlefield, Hiraishin. He gave her everything he had on it, how he learned it from Tobirama, and his improvements on the seal formula itself. The final part of the information was on two special variations of the kunai he normally used, with a much more advanced seal on them. These could be used for several techniques he had created that nobody knew about. One of the biggest ones was the ability to recall the marked kunai back to the user's hands.

Once done, he pulled his hand away from her head as he gave her a reassuring smile. That smile vanished into a hard expression that was more than enough to make most ninja flee in terror as he faced the Kyuubi. His left hand reached across his body to a seal hidden inside his haori, a quick pulse of chakra releasing a weapons pouch that had been stored there. This pouch contained one of his experimental variations of the Hiraishin he had been working on that had been inspired by his wife's unique ability with chakra chains. Unlike normal weapon pouches, this one came apart into two that unrolled to reveal ten of the infamous tri-pronged kunai. Unlike the ones he normally used, the wood of the handle was stained pitch black with the seal shining an ominous red. The metal was also different, being a ghost white in color instead of the stealth black.

As the gates were slammed open by the massive bijuu, Minato calmly strapped each of the rolls to his forearms with the kunai on the outside as if he had all the time in the world. He looked up at the Kyuubi with an emotionless face as the beast let out a roar that would have many soiling themselves in fear. He crossed his hands in front of his bodies, resting his hands on the two kunai that were the 'kings' for the jutsu before whispering softly.

'Flying Thunder God Hidden Technique-Storm of Chains'

Each of the ten kunai took on a bright blue glow that matched his chakra, except for the two that acted as the foci for the jutsu. They took on a shimmering white sheen that was painful not in brightness, but intensity of the color. He draws one of the white kunai and throws it into the ground beside himself, creating the initiation of the jutsu. The second white kunai he throws behind the Kyuubi, the tiny weapon being ignored by the creature. As soon as it became embedded, he vanished in the yellow flash that was his signature while using the jutsu. In the midst of the jutsu teleporting him, he began to rapidly throw the other eight kunai and recall them as soon as they had struck. Each throw of the kunai created a chain made of chakra and seals from one of the two foci kunai. What made this technique far more dangerous than normal was that the kunai were thrown and recalled while he was in the middle of a teleportation that moved at the speed of light. In the span of an eye-blink, he was behind the Kyuubi with one hand resting on the focus kunai there to seal the jutsu. Tens of thousands of chains snapped tight around the bijuu, the weight of them crushing it to the ground. Minato flashed back to his daughter, only to collapse to one knee with exhaustion. The technique he had used would be ranked as an SS-class easily, due to the simply insane requirements to utilize it. The chakra expenditure alone would be enough to put three A-class jounin into chakra exhaustion comas.

Slowly, Minato stood, and walked until he was within reach of the muzzle of Kyuubi, his eyes narrowing at the being many would call a demon.

"Why would you go through the effort to break through the seal when I am present, knowing that you're still weak from our prior fight?" His voice was hard and commanding, the tone belonging that to a Kage confident in his powers. "You have gained nothing, since I can rebuild the seal again, and make it even more powerful since I am not being rushed this time."

"HO HO HO!" The voice of the Kyuubi was loud and powerful, and seemed to drip malice to the point it could be tasted. "You think My goal was simply to break through the seal? Foolish ningen, that was simply a distraction. By now, it's too late for your pathetic child. I have pumped four tails' worth of my chakra into her body. She's now a ticking bomb that will go out with a bang. I will reform in a few short years, and lay waste to your worthless village!"

The final words from the Kyuubi were followed by a roar of rage and power as it began to stand up, fighting the weight of the chains with an inexorable show of force. Behind Minato, the girl had hunched over as her body glowed with the amount of caustic chakra that had been forced into her. Minato turned and crouched down, placing his hands on her body over the locations of the first and last of the celestial gates. The only way he knew to help her would be an infusion of human chakra and life force.

"Life Gate-Release!"

A pulse-wave of chakra explodes out from his body as he skips the first two gates completely to open the one that will increase his vitality enough that his next jutsu won't instantly destroy him. His skin darkens to the color of blood as his circulatory system starts working at several times the level it normally should be, flooding every tissue with hyper-oxygenated blood and chakra.

"Forbidden Arts: Rise of the Phoenix!"

All over Minato's body, fuuinjutsu markings appeared one by one until they covered so much skin that his body looked almost purely black. The markings flare bright red as they burn off of his body, the image of the ink burning off reminiscent of a stylized phoenix rising into the air. This jutsu sacrificed the life-span of the user to give them a massive boost in vitality and chakra. He pushed the chakra and very essence of his life into his daughter to shield her from the dangerous chakra of the Kyuubi.

Minato whispers softly to his daughter, encouraging her to fight the power of the demon and take control from the bijuu. His final words are three that every child wishes to hear from their parents, and her reply has him smiling brightly before he stands to face the Kyuubi. He walks forward to where it is fighting to get rid of the chains, dropping to one knee with both hands placed beside the kunai that had started the jutsu that entrapped the bijuu. Minato's skill as a master of fuuinjutsu soon became apparent as without brush or ink, seals began to form around him, quickly spreading out to encompass the Kyuubi, the marks burned into reality through his chakra control alone.

Once the array is complete, Minato pushes even more chakra into the seals. "Fuuinjutsu-Sealing of the Sixty-Four Trigrams!" Unlike the original seal which was built on eight trigrams, this one was eight times as powerful. The Kyuubi was released from the Hiraishin chains only to be forced back into the cage created by the original seal. The gates slammed shut, with a set of horizontal bars locking into place in front of them. Both the vertical barred gates and horizontal barred ones featured thirty-two bars, with each bar covered in a repeating pattern of a different trigram.

Minato stumbled back, having exhausted everything that remained of his reserves in that last act. He moves over to his daughter, collapsing to his hands and knees beside her prone form. He kisses her forehead and smiles softly at her.

"Train hard, and grow up to be a powerful ninja. There are many people out there that will want to hurt you because of who your parents are. There is also someone that was strong enough to rip the Kyuubi from the seal that held it in your mother. Good luck my daughter!"

With those words, Minato dissolved into sparkling motes of chakra that quickly scattered and vanished into the air. The girl stood up on shaking legs to make her way over to look at the Kyuubi through the bars of the seal gates. She stared at the beast for a moment that seemed to drag on for eternity, amethyst eyes meeting crimson in a show of willpower. The Kyuubi broke the eye contact with the very slightest of nods before vanishing into the shadow of its cage as the girl turned and walked away, her form growing indistinct as she left her subconscious to awaken in the real world.

A/N: I know this is quite a bit shorter than the first chapter, but I had to fight my muse to get it out...and then it just seemed to hit the perfect stopping point. The next chapter will be an overview of her training and all of that fun stuff! (Yay for a training montage?)

Feel free to review! I love hearing what people think of my stories!