The Amazonian Gambit

Disclaimer. Naruto is not mine.
Rating. T
Pairings. Eventual MikotoxFugaku, KushinaxMinato; Slight RinxObitoxKakashi
Warnings. Canon and non-canon character death
A/N. nauruo ended, i'm nostalgic and really fond of these what-if type fics. it's been a very long time since i've actually sat down to write anything although i've planned many fics out, so please bare with me. this shouldn't be too bad as these snippets are not in chronological order, but be warned, sporadic updates.

In retrospect, Kushina Uzumaki realizes her team had been set-up to be a failure from the very beginning. Really, the youngest daughter of the main Uchiha family, a civilian girl and one of the female Uzushio refugees? It was obviously planned out to be one of the failed teams.

The redhead delights in thinking how those who planned it out reacted when Sakumo-sensei, drenched in yellow paint from head to toe, appeared at the registration office to mark his team as one that passed.

(Then again, Sakumo-sensei himself was well known for disliking those in upper management, so he must have been exceedingly pleased with his three little helions proving them wrong. Because they were his now, just as he was theirs, and they weren't letting go not again never again because Kushina had already lost everything once lost mom and dad and her brother and uncle and all her cousins and she was not going to go through that again not ever-)

Kushina Uzumaki knows that, technically, her team shouldn't have worked. They had been thrown together haphazardly, and no one had expected them to make it past the second test. But they had, by the skin of their teeth perhaps, but no one could dispute their passing.

On a rainy afternoon, in a muddy training ground in Konoha, Team White Fang was born.

(Because they're too much of Sakumo's team to be anything but.)

-o-

Given their temperaments, it was surprisingly easy for the three girls to get along. At the time, Kushina thought it was an example of her abilities as a charismatic future leader. Looking back, she realizes that it was really thanks to a friendly respect from Mikoto, and a fond tolerance from Yoshino.

Whatever the case, Team White Fang was very fond of each other. Mikoto was not as unwilling to display emotion as the rest of her Clan (and Kushina would later find out that this was due to her status as the third, female child of the main house, which automatically made her unimportant save for her potential as a bride and Kushina really hates the stupid traditionalists which reigned over the Clan for so long) and Yoshino, the youngest child coming from a small, fairly well-off civilian family was a sharp thinker and a younger sister wrapped in one.

(Neither Mikoto nor Kushina were ever jealous of their two-years younger teammate. The girl was smart, quick-witted and levelheaded in ways neither of the other two were, and they could appreciate that in a teammate and a friend, as it allowed them to question their own understandings and grow as individuals.)

Sakumo-sensei, in his own quiet, protective manner became a fond, somewhat exasperated father figure to the three.

(Because Kushina had lost her parents and Konoha had not been able to provide new ones, Mikoto had never truly been a child to her father as much as a chess piece and Yoshino's, for all that he was there and kind, had always been more interested in teaching his elder sons the business and leaving Yoshino's raising to his wife, who was not Yoshino's mother and disliked the girl immensely.

Well, they'd show them, the girls vowed early on, independently at first and then collectively. They'd show them to take them seriously.)

-o-

On a mission gone sideways in Ta no Kuni and when it looks like the end is near, Kushina inadvertedly reveals to her teammates her status as a jinchuuriki. This is in an attempt to strengthen their spirit while they are kidnapped, as she still has things she has to do (like bringing back her village) and things to prove (like the might of the Uzumaki, ya know!). When she realizes how quiet it is, and exactly what she has revealed, she lowers her head and prepares herself for the hate.

(This is the first ripple in ensuring things don't go as most would expect. Instead of the three girls morosely accepting their fate until their sensei comes to save them, Kushina's revelation prompts the other two girls to realize that they too have people to prove wrong and reasons to live and to do things for themselves and they are not going to just sit around waiting because they are Konoha kunoichi goddammit.)

Kushina receives a quiet, determined, "Father doesn't really see me as anything but a means to an end, and can't look at me because I remind him of Mother, who died giving birth to me, so he's looking forward to marrying me off, because he's a bit of a bastard like that, and if I just sit here I'm proving him right, so let's do something," from Mikoto (which impresses Kushina because she knows that four months ago Mikoto would have been too meek to even attempt saying such a thing and she is so goddamn proud of her beautiful, soft-spoken teammate even as relief rushes through her), and a bland "If we're doing sob stories, Mom doesn't really like me cause I'm actually a bastard Dad brought back from one of his trading trips, so she was really excited to send me to the Academy hoping I'd die in the field, now if both of you shut up, I can figure out how to get us out of here and show up at her doorstep," from Yoshino (which, really, what the fuck Yoshino they are going to have words later, once they get out of this mess, because hope is returning to everyone's eyes).

With that weight off her shoulders, Kushina is more at ease and prepared to follow Yoshino's plan on how to break out, completely unaware of what she has done for her friends.

When Sakumo arrives a few hours later, he finds a group of missing-nin bound by chakra chains and metal wires, half of them caught in a genjutsu (because Mikoto is awesome, like Kushina always knew she was, and activated her Sharingan) and the other half meekly apologizing to the villagers they had been attacking after receiving some kind of speech from Kushina which made them regret all their sins.

Sakumo loves his girls, though, which is why he greets them all with a hug despite Kushina's loud protests that "we are ninajs Sakumo-sensei, not children, this is embarrassing!" and if he realizes that they are more tight-nit than normal, he doesn't say anything.

He signs them up for the Chuunin Exams two months later.

-o-

(The girls pass the Chuunin Exams in Suna on their first try when they turn thirteen (Yoshino is eleven, and Sakumo-sensei had kept them too busy with courier missions and training to let them try the first times but he knew that when they did take the Exam they would take the world by storm and they have). They work well as a team, and they have several tricks up their sleeves.

Sakumo couldn't be prouder of his little darlings, who took out teams several years older with an ease that terrified both the other nations and some of his fellow Konoha Jounin-sensei.)

-o-

In the next three months, war officially breaks out.

(Much to the amusement of his team, it is now that Sakumo-sensei and his wife finally have a kid, a cute, little gray-haired blob they've decided to call Kakashi of all things and Kushina thinks that having a baby in the middle of a war is exactly what Sakumo-sensei would pull, just to prove that nothing is impossible, because he has become a paradigm of strength to his three genin.)

In the next three months, war officially breaks out, and suddenly Team White Fang finds that their skills are being used for war and assassination and infiltrations more and more often, perhaps in line with the work of their sensei in his ANBU days, but he's no longer part of ANBU, he's theirs, and something about all this doesn't sit well with Kushina, and she knows it doesn't sit well with her teammates either and-

One day, Sakumo-sensei's wife doesn't come back from a mission.

The girls take turns caring for baby Kakashi while his father seems to spiral further and further away from everyone, but they aren't parents in any sense of the word, and poor substitutes for it, and they are all so busy all the time now.

Mikoto is training with her Sharingan much to the surprise of her Clan (and wasn't that a slap in the face to her old man, Kushina thought at the time) and in her newfound position as sole heir to the main family (because the war has taken things from all of them, and while Mikoto did not really get along with her older siblings, she never wished either of them dead, and cried openly at their funeral despite reproaching looks from her father, a father she has no qualms standing up to now thanks to her team and her sensei, but to whom she defers in Clan matters still, a part of her forever that little girl that was more an inconvenience to the man than a daughter).

Yoshino is busy as part of the Strategy Department, a position her strong, quick mind makes her well-suited for, surprising to anyone but her teammates and sensei, with small stints in the Medic-Nin barracks ("One of us has to learn something about healing, given how prone Kushina and sensei are to injuries, and I don't think Kushina has the brains for it ("Hey!") and Mikoto's dad would be extra-grumpy if he found out anyone from his line was studying something that didn't have to do with attacking, so I'm really the only choice,").

And Kushina, with her sealing and chakra chains and jinchuuriki status is often at the very forefront of the war, because they can't really afford to place her anywhere else.

(It doesn't stop her from getting fed up eventually and publicly yelling at her sensei to shape up already because his wife, his beautiful, strong wife would not want him to wallow and seek death like he does, especially not when he has a son and a team, a family that loves him and cares too much about him to let him die, ya know!)

(Kushina doesn't know it, but both Yoshino and Mikoto also wake up hearing her rant, and once more owe it to her to getting their lives back on track, like she had on that mission when she broke through the gloom by revealing her status as a jinchuuriki, and reminding Yoshino and Mikoto that they still had reasons to live and do things for themselves because they are strong and out to prove all the naysayers wrong.)

-o-

Sakumo-sensei survives long enough to Kakashi to be in the Academy for all of five months, before falling prey to his own grief at his new status in life and ending it. It is no coincidence that the night little Kakashi walks in on his dad's dead body, his genin team has all been deployed to the battle field, too far away to put a stop to the tragedy, and ensuring Danzo will have a young orphan he can take in.

-o-

(Danzo fails at this, as Kakashi lost a father but gained three resolute older sisters, headed by the redheaded kunoichi who used to yell at her dad every time he insinuated that she had a crush on Kakashi's idol, Minato-sensei.

Kakashi will never know the fate he avoided thanks to the stubbornness of one Uzumaki, the caring of one future Uchiha matriarch, and the protective eye of one of the smartest, most cunning kunoichi, Konoha has produced who, along with the Uchiha, is not above resorting to blackmail to ensure that their sensei's genius son is kept far away from the clutches of a certain old warhawk.

But that is a story for another time.)

hopefully will get to Rin & the later stuff soon.

in the mean time, comments are greatly appreciated!