Chapter Two
Mito's health deteriorates over the summer, and by July she's bedridden and barely able to sit up on her own. Sometimes her son and granddaughter, Tsunade, come to visit her, sometimes the Hokage himself. Kushina knows what's coming, and she's scared. She doesn't want Mito to die, doesn't want to become a jinchuriki.
Five Uzushio shinobi arrive in Konoha the morning after her tenth birthday, and it's so good to see someone else from home—her real home—that at first Kushina doesn't understand what this means.
It's Mito who tells her. "They're here to seal the Nine-Tails into you," she says slowly, patiently, her breathing labored.
"When?" Kushina asks.
"Tomorrow night." Mito reaches for her with a trembling hand, and Kushina hugs her. She smells like cherry blossoms and maple and lilac, like the forests of Konoha.
"I'm not ready to let you go," she says.
Mito rubs soothing circles on her back and asks, "Do you remember what I told you? About how to survive the jinchuriki's life?"
"Yes. Love. I have to love." Kushina hasn't cried since the day Daisuke's genin brother pulled her hair and called her an outsider, and she tells herself she doesn't have the luxury of letting grief overtake her now.
"Never forget that," Mito says.
"I won't," Kushina promises. "I won't."
It's the Sandaime's stern wife who helps her prepare for the ritual. She bathes her in a tub of scalding water, so hot that it turns her fair skin pink. Biwako scrubs her back, chest, arms, and legs, even the soles of her feet. Afterward, she combs Kushina's wet hair and plaits it into a long, red braid. Then she dresses her in a white silk kimono and dabs rose oil on the pulse points at her neck and wrists.
"Why are you trying to make me pretty?" Kushina asks.
"This is the way things are done," Biwako answers, which isn't really an answer at all.
Kushina makes the long walk across the village with the Hokage's wife and two ANBU guards. Busy with their own lives, no one seems to notice them. She passes the bakery, the apothecary, the flower shop where she sometimes buys Mito's favorite lilies. The florist looks right past her, as if they've never met. Maybe she doesn't recognize that the clean child in the white kimono is Uzumaki Kushina, the girl who is always dirty and bruised.
But she feels someone watching her, and when she glances up she sees a small figure perched on the roof of the candy store. The setting sun frames him, outlining the boy in light and casting his face in shadow, but Kushina knows who it is just the same: Minato.
"Kushina!" Biwako says. "Keep moving."
"Sorry." She lets Biwako take her hand and march her through the streets of Konoha. Still, she looks over her shoulder, searching for one last sight of the boy on the roof. Minato waves at her, and for a moment, inexplicably, Kushina feels a bit braver.
They take her to an underground shrine on the western outskirts of the village. The place is unrelenting grey rock, cold and ancient. The air grows chilled despite the summer heat as she descends the stairs, down and down into darkness. One of the ANBU guards opens a door, and suddenly there's light. Braziers and torches bathe the wide room in an unearthly red glow, and Kushina sees that Mito is already there, stretched out on a stone table. It looks almost like a funeral bier, the old woman a corpse.
There's a second table, empty, waiting for Kushina. Biwako unties the obi around her waist, opens her kimono, and helps her lie down. Two of the Uzushio shinobi stand next to Mito, and three next to Kushina.
Mito turns her head and smiles at her. "It will be over soon," she says.
Kushina should close her eyes, but she can't seem to make herself. Instead, she watches as broken, black lines web across Mito's body, starting at the seal on her belly and stretching across her face and arms like dark veins, then extending into the air itself. These lines wrap around columns that support the shrine's ceiling, chaining Mito to them, and she gasps, chokes.
"You're hurting her!" Kushina says, and she starts to sit up, but one of the men from Uzushio—her clan, her family—holds her down, strong hands pinning her to the table. She fights, but the shinobi is older and stronger, and it's easy for him to restrain her.
"Mito-san," she cries, but the old woman is beyond hearing. A strange, red chakra cloaks her body, and Kushina can see the outline of tails—one, two, three of them. Can hear a sound almost like water, bubbling and boiling, except that this fills the room, overwhelming and ominous.
Four Uzushio ninja make hand seals simultaneously. Mito's belly runs black, and the red chakra spills forth from it. She can just make out the shape of a canine face, before the chakra comes toward her, envelops her, and plunges into her stomach.
Then she feels him, the Nine-Tails, and Kushina screams.
Minato's teammates are Horikita Hiroshi and Aragaki Yuka. Hiroshi is a round-faced boy with narrow eyes and a hoarse voice, Yuka a skinny black-haired girl, cold and reserved. Both come from shinobi families nearly as old as the village itself, and neither enjoyed being upstaged at their own graduation by a boy two years their junior. He had hoped to find friends on his team, but Hiroshi and Yuka seem determined to dislike him.
"They're jealous," Jiraiya-sensei says, one day after training. Yuka and Hiroshi already hurried back to their homes, but Minato lingered behind, hoping to spend more time with his teacher, and Jiraiya took him to a restaurant for dinner.
"Because I graduated ahead of them?"
Jiraiya nods. "You're younger than they are, but you're the better ninja and they know it." He looks Minato up and down and says, "Remind me what your father does."
Minato doesn't allow himself to blush. "He's a bricklayer, sensei."
"That doesn't help you either," Jiraiya says bluntly. "Trust me, I know. My father's a carpenter. Next to Princess Tsunade, granddaughter of the First Hokage, I'm practically a peasant." He drinks a cup of sake and pours another.
Minato takes a bite of braised pork, so tender that the fat seems to melt in his mouth. It's the best meat he's ever tasted in his life, and he wonders how much this meal is going to cost his sensei. He chews, swallows, and says, "But you're one of the Sannin now. I bet no one remembers who your father is anymore."
Jiraiya laughs. "You're right, they don't. If you're good enough, eventually no one will give a damn about where you come from."
"Do you think I'm good enough?" Minato asks.
His sensei gives him a lopsided grin. "Definitely," he says, and there's such pride in Jiraiya's voice that Minato has to smile back. "Now eat up. I'm going to put ten pounds on you before this summer is over."
After dinner, Minato goes home. He takes the long way, because things have been worse than usual since he made genin, and he doesn't want to see Otousan any sooner than he has to.
The night he brought home his first mission's earnings, Minato's father told him to keep his money. "I provide for this family, not you," Otousan had said.
The ryo he received were few enough, but he still made more in a day than his father did for a week of work. So he stashed his earnings in a cardboard box beneath his bed and told himself that he could save for his own place, and as soon as he has enough to pay for an apartment he'll leave this house and never come back. It's a nice dream, but Minato knows he won't really do it; he loves Okaasan, and he can't leave her alone with his father.
As soon as he walks through the door, Otousan asks where he's been and why it took him so long to get home.
"I went to a restaurant with Jiraiya-sensei," Minato says.
His father scowls and asks, "Did you let him buy your dinner?"
"No," Minato lies, straight-faced. "I used my money."
"Good," Otousan says. "You don't take charity from anybody, you understand?"
"Yes, sir."
Later, after the house is dark and locked, Minato lies awake, staring up at the ceiling. The headboard of his parents' bed hits the wall that separates his room from theirs, making a rhythmic thumping noise. He can't sleep for the racket, and he wonders whether his mother is crying tonight. If her belly will swell like it did last year, thicken with a baby that will never take breath. (Otousan doesn't want any more children, and so there will be no brothers or sisters for Minato).
I wish Jiraiya were my father. His sensei would never hit Okaasan, or rape her, or force her to throw away her baby before it could be born.
The next day, Minato is slow and sluggish during training, and Yuka manages to kick him in the face. He falls to the ground, and the taste of iron floods his mouth. Minato spits out a mouthful of blood and wipes his lips with the back of his hand, angry with himself for letting his guard down. Yuka and Hiroshi laugh until Jiraiya-sensei says, "Shut up, both of you."
"Minato beats us all the time, and you never tell him to be quiet," Hiroshi says, frowning.
"Minato never laughs at you when you're down," Jiraiya says.
After this, Minato focuses, and by the end of training Yuka and Hiroshi are both lying in the dirt. Jiraiya helps them up and sends them home. Minato starts to leave too, but his sensei catches him by the shoulder and says, "Not so fast. What's wrong with you today?"
"Nothing." Minato makes himself smile, because if he has learned anything from ten years in his father's house, it's that what happens behind closed doors stays there. "I'm fine. Really."
This is the first lie he's told Jiraiya-sensei, but it won't be the last.
Kushina thought she understood what it would mean to be a jinchuriki, but now she knows how foolish that was. How childish.
She carries the weight of the Kyubi with her wherever she goes. She feels his vitality, the pure power of him, imprisoned within her body. At night she lies awake and cries for Mito, and some part of her (that isn't truly any part of her at all) thinks, The old woman deserved to die.
Uchiha Ando continues to call her names—ugly, foreigner, bitch—whenever Koichi-sensei's back is turned, and Kushina fights him. One day when she has Ando pinned to the ground, she hears a harsh voice whisper, Break his neck. Twist to the right, the way you learned, and he'll never bother you again. She scrambles away from the boy, afraid to touch him, terrified that she'll succumb to the Kyubi.
Kushina remembers Mito's advice, that the only way to overcome the Nine-Tails' hatred is to love, so she spends as much time with Mikoto as she can. But even her friendship is not always enough to suppress the beast, and as she's braiding Mikoto's beautiful, blue-black hair, this thought comes from nowhere: Take out those famous Uchiha eyes before the sharingan can awaken, and she'll never be a better ninja than you. Kushina looks down and finds she's already drawn a kunai. She bites back a scream, puts the dagger away, and tells Mikoto she has to go home early today.
She walks from the Uchiha compound back to the grand, old house that feels so cold and empty without Mito. On the way, a fruit vendor tries to sell her a tomato, and it's all Kushina can do to keep from overturning his cart. That isn't the Nine-Tails' ill humor at work; just her own. Although it's getting harder and harder to tell the difference.
Kushina doesn't see much of Namikaze Minato, her erstwhile classmate, but she hears about him plenty. He and his team have successfully completed every mission the Hokage sets, and rumor has it they've moved up to B-rank assignments, unheard of for a group of genin. The next winter, Team Jiraiya takes the chunin exams, and to no one's surprise, Minato makes it to the final test.
Kushina sits in the stands and watches him move through older opponents as if they're nothing. First he defeats Arigaki Tsuda, his own teammate's older brother, then Nara Shikaku with his clever shadow jutsu. He goes all the way to the final round, where he squares off against a solemn-faced Uchiha boy who looks to be at least fourteen.
"Go Fugaku!" Mikoto shouts.
"You're so predictable," Kushina says, smiling. "You cheer for anyone from your clan, and nobody else."
Mikoto shrugs and says, "What can I say? I'm an Uchiha to my bones."
You're an Uchiha before you're a citizen of Konoha, Kushina thinks, but doesn't say.
Down in the arena, the boys have already started to fight. Minato moves so fast that Kushina can barely follow his movements, but somehow Fugaku manages to block his attacks and counter them.
"How can he keep up with him? The sharingan?" Kushina asks.
Mikoto nods proudly. "Our dojutsu allows us to see almost everything." She laughs and says, "I wish I had mine, so I could see this fight better."
Fugaku summons his clan's signature fireball. If Minato were any less swift, the fight would be over then and there, but he just barely dodges the jutsu, gets behind Fugaku, and kicks the older boy in the back of the head. Fugaku manages to stay standing, but it's a near thing, and Minato pulls a kunai on him.
Come on, come on, Kushina thinks. Get him, Minato.
But Fugaku catches the kunai with his own, and the fight continues, Minato's speed matched against the predictive capabilities of the sharingan. It goes on for a full half-hour, and Kushina never stops watching.
The Uchiha uses his fireball jutsu again, and the Kyubi whispers, He's going to burn. Won't be so pretty anymore then, will he? Kushina pushes the ugly voice away and watches, relieved, as Minato skirts around the technique, moving out of its range more easily this time.
Fugaku may be able to see his opponent's every move, but he's slowing down and Minato isn't. It only takes one moment's hesitation—and there, he has him. Minato slashes Fugaku across the forehead and blood runs into his eyes, blinding him. It takes another moment for Minato to deliver the final blows, but this is the moment when the fight truly ends.
He did it. He won.
Minato, the youngest contender in these exams, flattened the rest of the field without sustaining a single injury. Kushina wouldn't have believed it if she hadn't seen it herself, the way he moved so fluidly through every fight, too quick to catch. Untouchable. Konoha talks of nothing else for days, and when she hears people saying that Minato will be the next Hokage, Kushina doesn't think the idea sounds so stupid anymore.
Minato is promoted just four days after his eleventh birthday, making him Konoha's youngest chunin in a generation.
Jiraiya says, "Congratulations," and ruffles Minato's hair. "At this rate you'll be a jounin before your voice changes."
He still takes missions with Jiraiya-sensei, Hiroshi, and Yuka, but soon after his promotion, the Hokage sends Minato on his first lone assignment: a B-rank infiltration. The mission directive says he is to break into the vaults of Kusagakure and steal the scrolls containing their kinjutsu.
"Don't we have a peace treaty with the Grass?" Minato asks.
"We do," the Sandaime says. "But that hasn't stopped Kusa nin from attacking our shinobi. If they're not going to honor the terms of the treaty, then neither will we."
Minato nods. "I understand, Hokage-sama."
It takes him almost a full day to reach Kusagakure, then another hour to scout the village and find the place where the vaults are kept. Minato removes his shinobi garb, dresses in the kind of threadbare clothes common to orphans, and sneaks into the alley behind the building, quiet and careful.
There's a single guard on duty, a shinobi in his later years, perhaps forty or forty-five, leaning against the wall, smoking. The end of his cigarette glows brightly, an orange ember in the dark.
"Excuse me," Minato says. He tries to adopt his most pitiful tone, to sound tired and afraid when he asks, "Can you spare some change? Just a few ryo, so I can buy something to eat."
The ninja frowns and Minato draws closer, hands cupped and outstretched.
"Beat it, kid. I'm working," he says.
Something in his tone reminds Minato of Otousan, and he isn't sorry at all when he pulls a kunai from the shinobi's own belt and stabs him in the stomach, too quick for the man to react. He falls to the ground, clutching his belly. When he opens his mouth to scream, Minato hits him in the back of the head, the way Jiraiya-sensei taught him, and the Kusa nin passes out. Blood pools around him, and a little red river of it runs down the sloped alleyway.
He stands still for a moment, watching his enemy bleed, and he wonders if the shinobi will die.
The building is windowless, so he scales it and climbs in through a hatch on the roof. Inside, he finds more guards, and Minato quietly knocks them unconscious, one by one, and leaves them lying prone in the halls, like toppled dominoes.
Stealing the forbidden techniques from the vaults is simple. The chamber where they're kept is booby-trapped, but Minato sees the wires and disables the snares easily enough. Then he quickly searches through the scrolls until he finds the ones that contain kinjutsu, stuffs them in his bag, and leaves the same way he came in.
He should get out of here, head back to Konoha immediately, but Minato stops by the alleyway where the old shinobi lies. He crouches by the man and puts his fingers on his neck, feeling for a pulse that isn't there.
I killed him.
He waits for sadness, anxiety, or guilt to come, but Minato doesn't feel anything at all.
Author's Notes: Many thanks to uchihasass for her help as the beta for this chapter!