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Wavelets wobble across the surface of the pool as Kakashi sits up. Perhaps a few inches deep, the water he is lying in is sapphire and cold, and it stretches out not like a pool, no, but like a lake or a sea. There is no current; it is still but for the ripples from his movement, expanding out as far as he can see. This isn’t far. Like the dark fogs that seep through Fire’s woods in the autumn, blue-black clouds drift just over the water, angry and swelling with rain. It seems as though the sky has settled low – too low. There is no sunlight here, or even moonlight, but there is a light of some kind deep within the clouds, flashing or pulsing like a heart. Whatever it is, it’s faint, and it’s all there is to see beyond the midnight-blue shadows of the storm rolling in.Kakashi cannot hear any rain, but the evidence is a flood around him. His legs and back are wet and chilled, and the ice-cold water drips down his neck as he gathers his bearings. There are few to gather with so little to see. He is weaponless and without his med-pack, and a swift pat-down uncovers no scrolls, food pills, or anything of use. Minato’s kunai, which he keeps strapped to his thigh, is gone. But he has his forehead-protector and armour, including the leather vambraces which he twists out of habit as he rises to his feet. Water sloshes around him. He stands in the eye of the storm, surrounded by dark clouds on all sides. No more than twenty feet separates him from them, and it feels as though they’re closing in.This certainly isn’t Konoha, but it doesn’t feel like a dream. His dreams are vivid and deceptively realistic, rife with missions and combat and blood. His team feature heavily, both living and dead. That he is alone now suggests there is another power at play. Kakashi clenches his jaw and looks to the distant light, waiting for something to reveal itself. The clouds pass without a sound, but they seem to carry a rumble within them. Thunder. As the wavelets sink back into this glass-like sea, the clouds brighten with a flash of lightning, and Kakashi’s gaze catches on something lying just beneath the water. Something large.Unarmed and wishing for a kunai, he trudges over to the shape. His steps are so loud as he wades through the shallows that he could be the thunder in the sky. More lightning illuminates this strange area, revealing a large, rectangular object just underneath the surface. Kakashi crouches and shoves his hand under the water, tracing his fingers along the cloth. It seems to be some sort of tarpaulin or paper: it’s gigantic, longer than he is tall and three times as wide. Through the sapphire-hue of the water, he can make out a blur of lettering, some of the characters familiar but others not. He squints and stands over it, the ice-cold water sliding down his back as he recognises the foundations for a seal.Lightning flares. A monstrous shape slinks through the glow before fading back into the darkness. Thunder crashes. Kakashi backs up from the seal, from the clouds and the shadows. The centre of the storm is the safest of no safe places to be. The seal lies undisturbed under the rippling waves, but Kakashi’s heart pounds as he crouches down into a defensive position. He pats his thigh once again for a weapon and finds nothing. His chakra is dim beneath his skin – subdued. He racks his brain for how he came to be here and remembers – fragments. He was in Konoha is last he can recall. A blur of white reminds him that he was at the hospital, and then his memories are dark and fiery red. Kushina, for no one else burns like flame. No one except the demon inside her, and with a sharp breath, Kakashi remembers Naruto’s birth; the masked man killing the rest of the midwifery team, the blood and fire, Kushina screaming and the Nine-Tails –The Nine-Tails. The village. Naruto’s first tears and golden chains. Minato’s thunder-step and Kushina’s mouth full of blood as they argued: to re-seal the Nine-Tails in Kushina guaranteed death, but to split its chakra and hope that Naruto, not even an hour old, may survive even half of the demonic spirit would be a gamble with an unparalleled price. Naruto’s whisker-like cheeks had been pinched in distress. Towering over them, the Nine-Tails had snarled and struggled against Kushina’s chains, its tails like hurricanes and its anger a storm. Kushina was dying faster than Kakashi could keep her alive, but everyone including the village would perish if the Nine-Tails tore free.“Sensei. Sensei!”His wife or his child – how was Minato supposed to choose?“Seal it in me.”More lightning brightens the clouds, casting the looming figure of the Nine-Tails in shadow. It appears to be stalking through the storm, its gigantic tails writhing like snakes in the darkness. Although it must stand as tall as the Hokage’s Rock, taller than Kakashi can see from his crouch, taller than he could ever imagine, it’s only visible with each flash of lightning. As the light fades each time, the storm seems to swallow it again, hiding it away until the next white-hot bolt. Thunder continues to rumble, but Kakashi wonders now if what he thought was thunder is instead the Nine-Tails pacing over this sea. Fear dries out his mouth, clogging his throat. He watches, frozen, as the Nine-Tails flickers in and out from sight. Only the storm stands between them. The clouds are all that protect Kakashi now: even Minato’s kunai wouldn’t help him, and certainly none of his scrolls, shuriken, or –The seal.“It worked,” Kakashi breathes, and his voice carries over the mirror-like water and into the clouds. Another lightning bolt crashes down, so close to the eye of the storm that he can see the sparks scattering over the sea.Cat-like eyes fixate upon him. Incandescent and red.Blood drains from Kakashi’s face.The Nine-Tails lunges; it jumps the length of the village in a single, terrible step. There is nowhere to run and nowhere to hide, but in a moment of madness, Kakashi sprints for the seal. The demon fox crashes down; water explodes into the air. If Kakashi had Kushina’s chains then maybe he could subdue it; if Minato’s speed, then avoid it; or perhaps even Rin’s lone sharingan to do something – anything. But he has nothing: he is a medic and even he won’t survive this. Water crashes over him like a wave, filling his lungs before he can shout. It knocks him onto his back into the shadow of the great beast. The fox’s fur is fire, its teeth are blades, and its eyes are molten suns of rage as a wall of lightning splits open the clouds and strikes the water between them, blinding the world in white. Its roar could shake mountains. Kakashi rolls onto his side, clutching his ears. Water and white fire splash up around him. The lightning carves the storm apart in a candescent row of light: each bolt is a bar of a colossal cage, and the clouds are the prison in which the Nine-Tails is contained. The fox shrieks and falls away, four of its tails slamming against the cage to no avail. The lightning disappears almost as quickly as it appeared, but the Nine-Tails remains wary, prowling at the edge of the clouds. The last bolt to fizzle away had struck the seal partially hidden under the waves. It isn’t damaged – no, it appears to be the centre of the storm and whatever protection it brings, and the Nine-Tails roars again, spitting cinders and its eyes aflame.Son of a bitch, Obito’s voice says.Kakashi risks a glance upwards. The Nine-Tails’ blood-thirsty eyes boil likes suns. It can’t escape the storm and it realises this with a snarl of lips pulled back over teeth. Thunder crashes once again, but it could be the sound of the Nine-Tails frantically circling Kakashi and the eye of the storm.“UZUMAKI!” it roars, thrashing against the lightning as it strikes down again. Its cry is like nothing Kakashi has ever heard and he’s heard death, torture, and pain. “I WILL SET YOUR COUNTRY AFLAME. I WILL BURN YOUR VILLAGE TO THE GROUND. I WILL NOT BE CONTAINED BY A PATHETIC HALF-BLOODED CHILD!”“Would you prefer a baby?” Kakashi drawls, finding courage in Obito’s guffawing laughter. Even standing, he is an ant in comparison to the Tailed Beast, but he tips back his chin and remains firm. “That was your other option.”The Nine-Tails seethes, teeth gnashing like an earthquake. “I would have ripped that infant apart,” it snarls. “And I would’ve been free.”Minato and Kushina would’ve stopped it, Kakashi knows; they would’ve died stopping it. “You think so?” he taunts, bellowing up at the beast. He’s made many stupid decisions in his life, and this has to top them all. Volunteering himself as a host for a demonic beast is one thing, but mocking it is another. “He’s a Uzumaki! Is that what you want: to be stuck with a Uzumaki again?”The Nine-Tails collides into the lightning-wall as it attempts to lunge again. Kakashi’s heart leaps into his throat, but with an ungodly shriek the Nine-Tails veers back, smouldering into the storm. It screeches, lashing its tails through the clouds, but the seal holds. Defeated, it stalks its cage with the temper and the patience of a thousand imprisoned years, slinking back into the shadows again.“I will escape this place,” the Nine-Tails vows, its voice resounding around the stormy plane. “I will consume you.”For better or for worse, Kakashi doesn’t doubt it. He swallows, breathing hard. I will not show fear, he thinks, even though his knees threaten to collapse. If Obito has any other encouraging words to say, then Kakashi cannot hear them over the pounding of his heart. “Yeah?” he barks, not sure where the Nine-Tails is now but throwing his voice out all the same. “I won’t make it easy for you.”The Nine-Tails – laughs. “You already have.”Thunder booms and then – crying; distant, wailing tears. Kakashi turns away from the seal, sloshing through the water to pinpoint the sound. The Nine-Tails quietens and the lightning calms, but the storm-clouds continue to roll in through this metaphysical plane. Where they were once carrying thunder, now they are carrying the baby’s cries. For a moment, panic grips Kakashi at the thought that Naruto might be here, but then there’s another voice, softer and calm, and it sounds closer still and yet so impossibly far away.“Shh, Naruto, let him sleep.”“Sensei!” Kakashi blurts, his fear waning at Minato’s voice. He wades away from the seal, ignoring whatever has become of the Nine-Tails.“No, no, wake him up,” Kushina says, tired and probably a hallucination but alive. “I’m gonna ground him ‘till he’s fifty.”Kakashi startles himself by laughing. “That’s fine,” he replies to the air, pacing at the edge of the storm, looking for an exit. “That’s fine, just wake me up. How do I wake up?”Naruto’s cries are the loudest so Kakashi clings to that sound. He focuses on it, blocking out the slosh of the water and the crack! of the sky. If this place is somewhere between a dream and reality – a shared reality, between him and the fox – then he must have some control. He’s not the one sealed here, after all. He sits at the edge of the storm – considers lying down, just as he’d awoken, but decides against it – and reaches inward to his faint pulse of chakra. He ignores Minato’s and Kushina’s muffled conversation and lets Naruto’s tears wash over him instead, centring himself into meditation with the sound as his guide.The storm passes – and this time, it carries Kakashi away.