What If Naruto Chose the Nine-Tails

The seal that bound the Nine-Tails' power is cracking—and twelve years after the beast's attack on Konoha, the fallout has only just begun. Naruto Uzumaki wakes in a hospital bed, battered and defeated. He couldn't save Sasuke at the Valley of the End, and worse, the price of that failure is written into his own body: the Eight Trigrams Seal is failing, and with every surge of frustration, grief, or shame, the Nine-Tails' chakra bleeds closer to the surface. The Fifth Hokage herself delivers th