Prologue:

Kushina never could quite decide whether October 10th was the best or worst day of her life. As the day she finally was able to hold her precious baby it should by all rights have been undoubtedly the best, but everything that transpired afterwards made it so that she could never look back on the day with the joy that it deserved.

And to think it had started out so perfectly! Okay, so she didn't really picture being dragged down the street past her friends to a top-secret location inside a barrier when dreaming of becoming a mother, but discounting the secrecy everything had been perfect! She'd seen Mikoto for the first time in months, met little Sasuke-chan, given birth with her husband by her side the whole time, and laid eyes on the little baby she had been waiting to meet for eight excruciating months.

If Kushina ever saw that masked man again, she would teach him why the men of Konoha universally feared her as the Red Hot Habanero dattebane! How dare he ruin everything!

It was like some kind of nightmare. Everything had been so perfect, then there was screams from the midwives and her little baby was in the arms of a masked lunatic. The following moments were nothing but pure chaos, where she was too exhausted by the difficult labour to do anything but watch in horror while her husband was forced to abandon her to rescue their child.

The masked man had some kind of strange jutsu that connected distant locations through a bizarre intermediary space. Before Kushina could do more than recoil she was sucked into the man's eye, of all things, and spat out miles away from the birthing location. This was not the first time she was kidnapped, nor even the second, but it was certainly the first time someone had been able to spirit her away quickly enough to restrain her and draw out the Kyuubi.

And for what? "To destroy Konoha."

Kumo had wanted her for her large chakra capacity and suitability to become a jinchuuriki when most of their hosts had failed and gone on mad rampages. Iwa had wanted her in order to blackmail their accursed enemy the Yellow Flash. Kiri had simply seen her as a last remnant of a neighbouring village they had destroyed in the war for their sealing prowess and too dangerous to be allowed to remain in enemy hands. Suna, she suspected, merely had been testing how Konoha would respond to having one of their jounin detained in face of an impending peace treaty and had not chosen her for any special reason.

Never before had anyone targeted Kushina for the express purpose of harming her village, nor had any of her kidnappers known she was a jinchuuriki – though the Kumo-nin had their suspicions. Certainly none of them had been well-informed enough to know her strength would be at an all-time low after childbirth not only due to the gruelling labour itself but also the strain of keeping a seal in place simultaneously. And definitely none of her kidnappers had been well-informed enough of her private life to find out her due date.

She wanted to fight. She wanted to draw the Kyuubi back into her body where it was meant to be and pummel that man so hard that that creepy mask became inseparable flecks in his bloody skin. However it was not to be, for she could not even stand. She could not defend herself. She could not defend her family. And once again, she could not defend her village.

All she could do was rest on her cot beside her baby and worry while her husband was out protecting the village. Never had Kushina felt more useless in her life, the desperate take care lingering on her lips and the confident I'll be back soon echoing in her ears. Greetings given every day but never before hanging in the air with a sense of promise, of a promise that she wished more than anything would be kept.

Naruto settled down beside her, asleep and oblivious to his mother's distress and the danger his father was placing himself in. Kushina nuzzled him close to her, all too reminded of how he had been snatched from her side mere minutes before. She was not strong enough to defend him, not now after giving birth and nearly dying from the Kyuubi extraction. She only hoped the masked man did not return. How was Minato faring? Which one was he battling right now, the masked man or the Kyuubi? She heard roars and crashes far off into the distance, but could not even go see out a window what was happening in Konoha far away.

She lay like that for minutes, mere minutes stretched into eternities by worry, before suddenly her world was a flash of yellow, strong arms around her abdomen, and bestial roaring from behind. The momentary peace was shattered in sprays of wooden splinters as the hut she had been in was destroyed and she and her child whisked to safety.

She knew what to do. She'd been trained on how to restrain a rampaging bijuu since she had caught the Uzumaki clan elders' attention as a child. Screwing up every last scrap of chakra remaining in her, chains shot out from Kushina's body and pinned the Kyuubi to the ground.

She turned to Minato, breathless from the effort, and began to explain how she'd hold the fox down and drag it to its death with her when Minato cut her off, panic and sadness written clearly across his face. "Kushina, save your strength. You need to focus completely on detaining the Kyuubi, even if just for a little while longer. I have an idea, but I need you to buy me time."

"What… idea…"

"There's no time to explain, Kushina, please!" He was looking at her so desperately, so desolately. Kushina wanted to argue, to demand he tell her everything, but he was right. There was no time for explanations and the Kyuubi was difficult to detain at the best of times, never mind when she had been brought within a hair's breadth of getting acquainted with Death.

She had no choice but to believe in Minato, that he knew what he was doing. Placing all her last hope in him, Kushina nodded.

Everything after that was a blur of the Kyuubi straining at her chains and desperately straining back in a deadly game of tug-of-war with the most powerful of the bijuu. She could hear Naruto crying in the background and Minato softly chanting the name of some jutsu, but she couldn't afford to look away from the agitated monster in front of her. To contrast the Kyuubi, towering over her, was afforded the perfect view of everything that was happening and evidently did not like it. There was a horrible moment where he swiped an enormous clawed paw past her and towards where she guessed Minato and Naruto were, and it was only sheer desperation and willpower that allowed Kushina to squeeze one last burst of chakra out to restrain the foreleg.

She had depleted all her chakra. In a minute she would die from chakra exhaustion and the fox would be set loose. She had failed; she couldn't protect anyone any longer.

Please, Minato, hurry.

Blackness filled her vision and the chains slacked, losing their burden, falling to the ground and dissipating. The ground rose to make the acquaintance of her head and stars filled her vision. The Third Hokage's face swam in front of hers, lips moving in words she could not hear above the buzzing in her ears, and a heavy green glow was placed on her chest. The world blurred around her in nauseating motion and faded into and out of black, and going to white. The smell of antiseptic filled her nostils and brisk voices snapped out commands she was too far gone to understand.

Until at last the black won and Kushina knew no more.

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*This is an AU of what the Naruto world would have been like if Minato had just gone ahead with the sealing instead of wasting time explaining everything to Kushina. Seriously, with a giant demon fox straining at your wife's last ditch effort to restrain it, that was NOT the time for a family argument!

**/