Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or the Naruto-verse or any of the characters in it. I don't think anyone thinks I own it, but might as well write it anyways...
A/N: Third chapter! This is the last one I have prepared, but I'm already working on the next one. Inspiration, people! It helps with writing (Although all I'm lacking is initiative). Also, apologies about the length of this one, but it just made sense to cut it off there. (It's still kinda close to exactly 4k, though!.. But it's still shorter than the last by 2k words..)
Edit (19/02/18) : I ran out of witty things to say here. But I still want to leave a comment so that you'll know this chapter has been edited, and is approved by (older) me!
That night, like most others, Kushina had been able to do absolutely nothing, while staring at the destruction wrought by the Kyūbi. She had dreamt about that night almost every night since she came to the small remote village. She was good at hiding it, though. Beads of sweat could be written off as light fever, and nobody slept close enough to hear the occasional whimper that shinobi training should have left her unable to make long ago.
What struck her the hardest was how it all felt so real. She could feel the warmth of the flames that consumed the outskirts of the city, she could hear the cries of the civilians, and she could feel her own pained breath... She looked at the happenings at the place where the Kyūbi was sealed as a disembodied onlooker, who could do nothing to change the proceedings as they went on.
The masked man was always following behind her like an ominous shadow. He was everywhere she went, and he had the same Sharingan eyes the Kyūbi had possessed at that moment. As she relieved her last moments with her husband – the only moment when she felt like she was in her own body again – she was suddenly pulled away from the nightmare right before the claw of the Kyūbi could pierce through her and Minato's chests.
Instead, she found herself standing in the golden glow of her unconscious, looking up at the remains of the broken ball of magma that had once held the Kyūbi. Glowing red eyes drew her eyes downwards, a snout proceeding through the darkness behind the stakes-turned-bars, as the great fox expelled a fog-like breath from his nose.
"Brat. I'm getting sick of reliving that night." the Kyūbi growled at her, fangs bared slightly. Kushina sent him an apologizing look. She was surprised to see that waist-long red hair was stuck to her head. "Hey, I look like myself in here! How did I not realise that last time?" she wondered, running her fingers through the red threads in awe. The Kyūbi simply sighed and lowered his head. As Kushina's eyes got used to the darkness in the fox's half of her seal space, she noticed his smaller-than-normal stature. He did actually look a bit pathetic in his current state, though she was certain he was by no means powerless – even if he only possessed a fraction of his chakra.
"My patience may be great, but it is not eternal. When are we going to get out of here? I know you are enjoying yourself, socializing with those ants, but I have a red-eyed bastard to exact revenge on." the Kyūbi reminded her with a snarl. Kushina nodded enthusiastically with a serious expression on her face. Obviously, figuring out who the mastermind behind the incident had been was important – and moreover, there was also the duty of punching Jiraiya in the face – a duty she took very seriously. But despite that, she also wanted to know why Minato and herself and all those innocents had to die that night.
"I wasn't planning on sticking around long either, but how do you expect me to get to the elemental countries and defeat an opponent that killed me while I was several times stronger than I am now?" she asked accusingly with a raised eyebrow. The Kyūbi's eyes narrowed to slits in warning, as if daring her to speak that casually to him again. "If you have any ideas, I'm all ears!" Kushina exclaimed and crossed her arms, looking at those red, narrowed eyes expectantly.
This prompted a low chuckle from the hulking shape behind the stakes, as the form coalesced, and the eyes moved upwards, until they were several times higher than Kushina. "I do not remember you being this cooperative before. But I best remind you before you become too privileged – nobody tells me what to do." the Kyūbi sneered at her from his several-stories-high vantage point. Kushina fought against the instinct to flinch away, and stood her ground, seemingly un-erred by the towering beast. Something in the Kyūbi's eyes told her she was being evaluated and found sufficient.
"I admit I haven't been as hospitable as I should've been. But really, who can blame me? You're not exactly approachable with your sneering and stink-eyes, and your 'ore-sama' attitude. But I'm willing to change my plans to include your revenge, so you should help too! We're both at stake here, y'know?" Kushina complained, looking a lot more confident than she felt. She had never really been satisfied with their situation – the seal that used to hold the Kyūbi had been with cruel efficiency and little place for bonding. It was something she had always regretted but had been able to overlook nonetheless.
The Kyūbi's following cackles sounded like thunderclaps on a stormy day, and the entire seal space suddenly got five shades darker, as he lifted his head over the stakes, body stretching to allow his head to peer down at Kushina despite his lacking mass. "Of all the brats I have met, you have been the most intolerable. You imprison me for years, and then when your seal is failing you, you ask for cooperation. What prevents me from simply taking control right here and now?" the Kyūbi growled with a cruel self-confidence as red mass started leaking out from behind the stakes embedded in the ground. Kushina could feel the sickening feeling of corrupted chakra forcing its way into her system and did her best to fight it, but it was like stopping a faucet with her bare hands. A red mist rose from the bubbling mass of chakra, tinting the air in the otherwise golden seal space red.
"You don't know where you are. You don't know how to get back to fire country where the attacker was last seen, and if you flood my system with your chakra, my body will break down in moments. With a botched seal like ours, there's no telling what will happen afterwards. I admit it will not be pleasant for me if you try, but I dare you to risk it, Kyūbi." Kushina said defiantly, even as the bubbling red chakra reached for her feet and started climbing her legs.
And in a single moment, the chamber went from feeling like it was about to flood, to being back to normal. The Kyūbi huffed and retreated the boiling red chakra, leaving the room in a state as if nothing had happened, big head retreating back above and beyond the stakes. "You have made your point. Now go and get stronger so we can get out of here," he growled, and with the flick of a claw, Kushina was forcibly shoved out of her mental mindscape and into her own body, finding it completely healed and a slightly larger than normal stream of the Kyūbi's chakra in her veins. 'This will speed up my healing factor,' Kushina realised with a start. Maybe the grumpy old fox could be reasoned with after all.
Originally, she hadn't had much hope for reconciling with the bijū. But this gave her a bit of hope for a future where they could work together. 'As long as I'm able to get through his big skull before he doesn't need me anymore,' she thought with a nervous gulp, before going to sleep.
Meanwhile, the Kyūbi started thoughtfully at the spot where the red-haired human had been standing mere moments before. He was curled together in a ball, nine tails flickering absentmindedly. He didn't want to trust a human; not after everything they had done against him just because they feared him. But this human, although he couldn't remember having talked much with her in the past, looked at him and tried to speak past that fear.
It brought up a feeling he hadn't felt in ages – perhaps even since he last spoke with the Sage those many centuries ago. He didn't dare to hope, but… A small spark in the deepest depths of his mind told him that 'Maybe there's hope for this human yet…'
Kushina opened her eyes and was immediately faced with a gentle stream of very faint sunlight shining through the cracks in the wooden boards that made up the house. She pushed herself up and looked around. Naiyami was outside doing field-work (specifically tending to the crops that helped keeping the village fed) so she was alone in the house. Judging by the faint light, the sun was just about to rise. Kushina fumbled around in the half-darkness for a few seconds before using a slight bit of chakra to enhance her vision to avoid having to feel around after her clothes.
She quickly picked it up from the floor behind her bed (she was just as messy as always...) and pulled it on, racing out of the door and, in the process, forgetting to get breakfast. Her Kyūbi-healed body was simply too full of energy to sit still indoors any longer, and her new teacher was waiting.
She ran along the path towards the village centre as fast as she could manage without tripping in the faint before-morning light. As they say, it's always darkest before sunrise. Just as the clouds were painted pink by the rising sun, she reached the meeting place and found Reiden leaning against his scythe. He nodded acknowledging at her.
"So, you finally decided to arrive? Good! Let's get started." he stated in a fresh manner like he wasn't tired at all. Kushina matched his enthusiasm by jumping from foot to foot as a warmup exercise. "After you, old man!" she snickered at his offended expression. "Old-… I'm not old! You…" At Kushina's snicker he knew she was simply teasing and dropped his face into his palm. "We'll see if you're still this mischievous after I'm done with you."
He jumped up onto a tree branch and set off without waiting for Kushina to follow. As far as Kushina knew, the Guardians didn't jump from tree to tree like shinobi, but she didn't comment on it. To avoid raising any suspicion, Kushina chose to run after the Guardian on the ground. As far as anyone knew, she couldn't really use chakra, and showing she was capable of more could have unpleasant consequences.
They continued for a while in silence, simply running through the uniform woods. Reiden spent the entire time looking over his shoulder in what was probably supposed to be a stealthy manner and adjusted his speed to make sure Kushina wasn't falling too far behind – she appreciated the gesture and found it amusing how he tried to hide that he cared. It reminded her of her friends in Konoha, but she supressed the notion fiercely. This was not the time to get homesick.
Finally, they reached a small hut in the middle of a clearing in the woods. Clearly, Reiden knew most of the forest like the back of his hand - Kushina certainly wouldn't have been able to find this place on her own without spending a few days mapping the area first. The hut was not as prestigiously built as most of the other houses, making Kushina wonder if he had built it himself. It was raised slightly over the grass and weeds on a small sort of platform, and around the posts that held it up were silver-blue flowers - the first large flowers Kushina had seen that weren't purple. She prodded one of them curiously, causing it to snap closed. 'Whoops.'
"So how much do you already know?" Reiden tried to pry her attention away from the flowers, arms crossed in front of his chest, observing Kushina with his curious eyes. "Naiyami-san taught me the kata and kihon for fighting with gekkō, as well as the kata and kihon for the Tsubasajin taijutsu style. Other than that… I've seen the hand signs you use for hiding your wings, but that's it." Kushina decided as she nodded to herself, making Reiden raise an eyebrow. He hadn't expected her to catch that small detail. "I see... Would you mind a spar, then?" he asked, wanting to test out her abilities for himself. Kushina nodded enthusiastically, ready for a fight, well aware that Reiden would be much stronger than Naiyami. 'This will be a challenge to see how well I measure in a straight-up fight,' she decided, and found that she liked her chances despite everything.
They both released the genjutsu on their wings, and put themselves into the ready stance, kamae. Kushina adopted the modified zenkutsu dachi with her legs bended and her left leg and arm stretched slightly ahead, her right hand above solar plexus and her right foot at a 90-degree angle. Reiden, on the other hand, bended his knees a little, but stood otherwise regularly. His right eyebrow was raised in a come at me fashion, and Kushina shook her head faintly. It might look like he wasn't guarding himself, but she could see the way his muscles tensed as they prepared to react to the slightest movement on her part.
Kushina noted with a mental raised eyebrow that Reiden's wings didn't match his hair - unlike his brown hair, he had black wings like Kushina. I wonder if he dyes his hair? Kushina thought to herself. Reiden stared at Kushina in an almost creepy fashion, taking in all the details. There was certainly going to be a lot of corrections for her later, but instead of correcting her pose now, he decided that he wasn't going to wait for her any longer, and charged at her in a flurry of feathers and limbs.
Kushina was quickly overwhelmed by the rapid attacks from Reiden who exploited every little mistake she made. As she extended her left hand to punch, he puffed it lightly to the side with almost no effort, and slid into her guard, grabbing for her shoulder. "Naïve," he whispered almost audibly. She used her left hand to try and pry it off, but a quick manoeuvre with his leg, trying to push her off balance, settled the match.
In no more than 7 seconds, she found herself lying on the ground, with him barely having broken a sweat. He had been fast; not too fast for her to follow, but every single manoeuvre, he had countered flawlessly. 'I suppose a few weeks of practicing a combat style won't compete with a lifetime of training, shinobi or not. But I'll get better and show him what dirt tastes like!" Kushina decided to herself, spirit fire-y and mood high despite having just gotten pushed into the ground.
Blinking a few times, she saw the stretched-out hand of her new teacher. His eyes were harsh, but not entirely without kindness, Kushina noted before taking his hand.
"We have a lot of work to do." he stated, and they got to work. It was much harsher than the training Naiyami had put her through, but Kushina had a goal, and a Kushina with a goal was something to be feared. There was no way she was going to give up.
They started from the bottom up – small things like practicing the same blockade a hundred times until Kushina could to it in her sleep was what a large portion of their initial training consisted of. "I can tell that you're skilled at fighting, which helps you. But the problem is that you have too many moves to choose from, which in the end makes you uncertain and sloppy. I would be much less scared of a man who had practiced ten thousand different techniques, than a man who had practiced the same kick ten thousand times," Reiden lectured, whenever Kushina complained.
It felt like being back at the academy, but while it was mind-numbingly boring, it was not entirely unpleasant. Reiden was a good teacher, and she was interested in becoming stronger. A lot of the standard Konoha taijutsu wouldn't work nearly as well as the specialised ones that took advantage of her new kekkei genkai, so while it would be easier to simply rely on that, she would rather soldier on and learn something new.
As the sun was slowly approaching the horizon, and Kushina, tired and beat up, was taking a small break on the grassy ground, Reiden approached the panting girl nimbly. "We should get you home, now." he stated, and Kushina noted with slight envy that Reiden was barely exhausted at all. Since she was completely out of breath, she simply nodded, and even that sent pain down the sore muscles on her back. Who would've known that training kihon could be so exhausting? She certainly had never put in this much effort in the academy.
"Tomorrow we'll continue where we let off. Can you stand up?" he asked, actually genuinely concerned for his new student. Apparently he had taken a liking to her, Kushina observed with a mental grin. His way of teaching might be crude, but it was definitely effective, and that was what Kushina needed the most right now.
When Kushina collapsed after trying to stand up, Reiden sighed and picked her up in his arms in the bridal pose, making Kushina blush slightly. She hadn't had enough energy to perform the jutsu to hide her wings, so they were visibly hanging limply from her back. Kushina also noted with a grin that she was going to have to get new clothes if they were to continue like they had today, every day. These wouldn't last much longer. She would make sure to ask Naiyami when she came home. She wouldn't have a chance to do that anytime soon, though, as the exhaustion caught up as the adrenaline vanished, and she passed out.
When she woke up again from a mental poke courtesy of her tenant, she was glad to feel that, true to her expectations, the Kyūbi had still healed her body almost completely. She was still a bit sore in places, but nowhere near as badly as she had been the night before. She also noted that she hadn't had that nightmare again this night and was almost fully rested, for once, which left her wondering how and what the fox had been doing in her head. Something told her that he'd probably just say it was for his own sake if she confronted him with it, but she realised it as the gesture it probably wasn't supposed to be.
Hurrying up, she searched for her clothes, and was surprised to see a new set of clothes lying at the foot of her bed. This set was much sturdier than her previous clothes and would undoubtedly last longer. It was a welcome change after her old clothes had become irredeemably grass-stained and dirt-soiled. It actually reminded her a bit of the Guardian's clothing, even though it wasn't quite the same. She wasn't worthy of wearing that uniform, yet.
As all of the other clothes, it had discreet holes in the back one wouldn't even notice if one wasn't looking for them. As practical as wings could be, they could also be a bit in the way sometimes. Thankfully, everything in the village was made with having wings in mind. There were a few villagers, she'd realised, who didn't have the kekkei genkai. It was to be expected, as it was very rare to have a kekkei genkai that was passed on to every family member. Even prominent clans like the Uchiha and Hyūga had several family members without any signs of the gift.
Kushina realized she hadn't put genjutsu over her wings last night and flashed through the four hand signs. Tori, tatsu, ne, i, she recited, and quickly glanced at the wings that were disappearing in a shimmer of light, like the surface of rippling water. The henge jutsu they used was surprisingly simple to perform, but then again they didn't really need anything complicated.
She put on the clothes and realized she hadn't eaten in an entire day. Her stomach quickly confirmed this by rumbling.
Kushina paced over to the pile of charcoal left from the burnt firewood, and put some new logs on it, along with some smaller branches and then finally some small twigs to get the fire going. She picked up the flint and tinder lying in a storage jar and struck them against each other until the sparks hit the twigs that started burning. Kushina blew gently at the flames to make them take hold at the larger branches and finally the logs. This was one of those moments where she quietly lamented how terrible she was with fire jutsu, but she was a master of starting fires anyways, and always managed somehow. She spent a few minutes in blissful nostalgia, remembering how she'd, on several separate occasions, set fire to important documents as either pranks or revenge. After a few minutes, after getting a nice and large fireplace going, she got up to find the stand that would hold the cooking pot over the flames.
Kushina then went outside and filled the pot partially with water from the well, before going back to the house and putting two handfuls of grains from another storage jar in it as well. If it hadn't been for the bright flames, Kushina wouldn't have been able to see anything as there was still some time left before sunrise. After five minutes, the smell of gruel filled the house. Kushina sighed and stopped stirring as she took the pot off the fire and let it cool down. She was grateful that the fur-ball had awoken her before sunrise, so that she would have time to make breakfast. Sadly, since Naiyami was tending to the cows today, she had still been alone in the house; and she couldn't ask who had given her new clothes, which she was kind of curious about.
After Kushina finished eating, she cleaned the pot and threw the excess gruel on the unruly overgrown areas filled with purple flowers in the garden. She would have ask Reiden about the silver-blue flowers he had around his house; as much as Kushina liked the purple variation, it was getting a bit monotonous.
She glanced at the garden again, before heading off to the meeting place. The sun would soon rise, and she had a long day ahead of her.
After two strict weeks with Reiden she was pleased to see that she was surpassing genin level and maybe even heading towards chūnin. Thanks to the Kyūbi, Kushina could develop her abilities much faster than anyone else because of her insane recovery rate - though it wasn't as great as when she had all of the fur-ball instead of just a fragment. If Reiden had been surprised by her recovery-rate, he didn't show it. If he had also been surprised by her natural sense for combat after having practiced it for many years, he was very good at hiding that.
After getting her hand-to-hand combat to a respectable level, they had moved on to kenjutsu and Kushina quickly learned just how mean Reiden was with his scythe. It almost seemed to counter the gekkō weapons fighting style, causing Kushina to have to work even harder to come close to defeating the Guardian. At least this meant she would be better prepared for others with similar weapons. If she could defeat Reiden, she was positive she could defeat almost anyone else at kenjutsu. Well, unless they had some kind of unfair advantage or were above regular jōnin-level.
Currently they were working on her chakra control, and it was going very well, very fast. She had also learned a few clan jutsu like 'Hane Arashi', which worked by launching a barrage of kunai-like feathers, or 'Tetsu Tsubasa Kabe' which would envelop herself in her wings and make the feathers hard like iron. Whenever she meditated, she always had to make sure she didn't meditate too inwardly; as much as she liked seeing the fur-ball, and he hated seeing her, it wasn't the purpose of the exercise.
Mending their relationship had been every bit as hard as Kushina had assumed it would be – the fox simply refused to give her any benefit of the doubt. With every tiny step forwards, he went two steps back and right back to the starting line with some spicy insults and consistent nagging. It wasn't a wonder he found the seal uncomfortable – it was barely working in its current state after all, but despite all malfunction it was still many times more comfortable than what it used to be.
She could still do without the death threats though – by now she was almost certain they were meant to be good-natured, except the giant fur-ball had no experience in being nice to anyone, so he went straight for insults instead. Yes. That was totally the reason, and it wasn't because he hated her guts (quite literally) and wanted to get rid of her as soon as he wasn't liable to blow up if he tried to leave forcibly. Not at all.
Her concentration was broken by Reiden's footsteps heading in her direction. She opened her right eye warily and stared at the Guardian.
"I think it's been too long since we've had a spar," he said with an amused gleam in his eye - he was starting to enjoy their spars, since Kushina was one of the only people who could actually stand up to him, and frankly she was already better than a lot of the other Guardians. Her quick adaptability combined with ability to learn fast and almost undrainable stamina made her a monster in her own right, even if she was an inexperienced one – or used to be, at the very least. Then again, most of the so-called Guardians had never been in a proper life-or-death situation and lacked the real-life combat training Kushina had in hoards.
Kushina sent him a foxy grin and got up on her feet in one fluid motion. "Bring it on." she exclaimed, green eyes meeting grey ones.
They both jumped back from each other, Kushina pulling out her two gekkō (and real ones too - they had been a gift from Reiden when they were done training kenjutsu) placing herself in a combat stance, very different from the taijutsu style one she used to adapt. Her feet were in something more akin to a kiba dachi or horseback-riding position, with her arms raised outwards and slightly up, resulting in a stance that spoke of a reckless fighting style. Her wings were folded out threateningly, making her seem at least thrice her actual size – a tactic often used in the natural world to scare off predators, except in this scenario, Kushina was the predator.
Reiden pulled out his scythe, placing it along his arms and across his back, so that the head of the scythe was near his left hand and the end was near his right hand. This time, as with many times before this, he wasn't adopting the carefree-looking stance he had used when they started out – the time when he could afford not taking Kushina seriously had long since passed.
Reiden charged forwards and jumped, spinning, before bringing his left hand and the head of the scythe down towards Kushina. Kushina changed the grip on her right gekkō so that she was holding it backwards and caught the rod of the scythe while ducking under the long blade, as she moved her left gekkō towards Reiden's stomach. Reiden let go of the rod with his right hand and moved the end of it to intercept Kushina's left-hand gekkō, changing his grip on the scythe and holding it more like a staff.
Kushina, knowing that in a battle of brute strength Reiden would win, dodged to the side with a flap of her wings, making Reiden's scythe hit the ground, and started on the sequence of hand signs for Hane Arashi. Reiden saw this and quickly executed his own Tetsu Tsubasa Kabe, folding his wings around him as a shield, just as he was bombarded by the kunai-like feathers, repelling them all with the loud sounds of metal against metal.
Kushina had, however, used his short moment of blindness to get behind him, and quickly jumped at his back, both of her gekkō in a backwards grip and pointed downwards with the intent to rake him. Reiden quickly turned around when he lifted his wings and saw that Kushina was gone and lifted his scythe vertically just in time to intercept the two gekkō, which locked them in a stalemate since neither of them could get their weapon free.
They both ended up throwing their weapon aside and slipped into their taijutsu stances. Of course they could have reclaimed them if they'd really wanted to, but the playful smirks on both of their faces was enough to tell any spectator that they were enjoying themselves too much.
This time, Kushina was the one to attack first, as she thrusted her right palm towards Reiden who was just about to parry, when Kushina instead turned towards her left, using her wings as a cower while she did so, and just as her right wing moved out of the way, she punched with her left fist.
Reiden was prepared for an attack like that, but only just caught her left hand in time with his right hand. He then punched with his left hand, which Kushina brushed out of the way with her right arm, making an opening that she used to punch him in the gut.
He groaned at the force of the impact, but looked up at her, a small cocky smirk showing her that he acknowledged her skill but knew she was capable of more – 'Is this all?' it seemed to imply. She smirked back at him, and they both pulled back, bowing as a gesture of respect. Of course he was right – Kushina had many jutsu and various other taijutsu styles he'd probably never heard of up her sleeve, but using them in this situation would be unfair to her mentor, so she decided an honourable fight amongst ninja would be acceptable in this situation. And that was a thing that didn't happen often.
"You've improved greatly. I don't think there's much more you can learn in this hole of a village," Reiden muttered with foggy eyes staring past her and into the woods. Kushina had quickly learned that her teacher didn't like the village very much and approved of her choice of wanting to leave. Kushina was still slightly shocked at her teacher's statement. She didn't entirely believe in his words; she still had a long way to go if she wanted to master her new fighting styles, and Reiden was still much more experienced than her in that regard. But mostly she required the kind of training that would take countless spars and many months – months she couldn't afford to spend in the middle of nowhere like this, as much as a part of her wanted to.
"Don't give me that look." Reiden said, breaking Kushina's chain of thoughts. "I know you could beat me if you didn't hold back". This left Kushina gaping like a goldfish for a short moment – she had expected him to know, at least to some degree, but to hear him say it out loud like this was beyond expected. He didn't even look offended at the fact that a 10-something year-old was stronger than him either – Reiden simply smiled at her, which was a rare thing. He was always kind, but he only rarely smiled.
"Don't worry, you don't have to explain anything to me. Now, get out there and follow your dream."
"Th-Thank you, Reiden." Kushina stuttered and bowed deeply to her teacher, and for the first time in a while she was genuinely happy. It wouldn't be long now, until Kushina would leave the village. She was weaker than she'd like to be, lacked all the materials she wanted, and was hellishly unprepared, but no time spent in a village in the middle of nowhere would change that.
When both Kushina and Reiden's breaths had calmed down, Kushina felt like it was a good time to ask a few overdue questions she'd been holding back. The flowers, his hair, his house, his scythe... He'd never seemed approachable enough for her to ask about things like that during training, but now he was wearing a serene expression that gave Kushina the courage she finally needed. It also helped her incentive that this would probably be one of her last chances to ask her teacher about all of it.
"Reiden..." Kushina began and noted with satisfaction that she had his attention. "Those blue flowers by your house... Where are they from?"
The lack of an immediate answer made Kushina nervous that she might have asked something she wasn't supposed to – she hadn't seen the flowers anywhere else than here, and she'd been around the village a lot. But Reiden finally snapped out of his silence with a proposal; "Let's say a question for a question." Reiden, eyes filled with the question he had just asked, looked at Kushina who simply nodded and motioned for him to go on.
"I got them from outside this forest. When I was young, I also wanted to go out there... I don't, anymore. Let's leave it at that." he stated, making Kushina wonder if he had lost someone as well. Loss seemed to be a common theme around these parts. "Now, then. How much were you holding back?" he asked, raising an eyebrow at Kushina who simply smirked back at him with her foxy grin.
"A lot more than anyone would expect – especially from someone who looks my age." she replied, which only served to make Reiden even more curious; he chose not to make her elaborate on the matter, though. It wouldn't be fair keeping things to himself and then demanding others not to, especially after imposing the question-for-a-question rule.
"Alright... Why is your hair brown?" Kushina asked, earning a confused glance from Reiden. Clearly, that hadn't been one of the questions he had expected.
"Have you seen all of the other men in the village?" Kushina nodded. "That's why. I'm different enough as it is." He stated, and Kushina mumbled to herself. "Fair enough... But where do you get hair dye in these parts? It's not exactly-" Reiden cut her off with a wave of his hand. "Question for a question, remember?" Kushina closed her gaping mouth with an audible click, and nodded.
"My turn, now. Where are you planning to go?" he glanced suspiciously at her. Kushina thought a bit about what she should tell him - clearly, he was hoping for an honest answer, and Kushina wasn't much for lying. After a short hesitation she replied;
"I heard about a place far away with many different people and I want to join them. There's a person there I need to find. That, and I have someone I need to punch in the face." she said, her eyes going faint, and her smile turning slightly sour. Reiden pulled a bit back when he saw the expression on his students face that far outdated her physical age, but it was gone just as quickly as it had appeared, leaving Reiden to wonder if it had just been his imagination. He nodded at the answer, finding it satisfying.
"Well, then... Why are you living out here alone, and why do you use a scythe?" Kushina asked and Reiden shook his head. "That's two questions, Kushina!" he exclaimed, making Kushina scratch her neck sheepishly. 'Oops,' she thought. She had hoped he would let it slip, but clearly, he was paying attention. Reiden shook his head in faint amusement. "You're not very good at this, are you?" he asked rhetorically, before answering the questions.
"Firstly, I'm living out here because I like it. Besides I don't have a field to keep like the rest of the villagers. Secondly, my father used this scythe before me. Just as gekkō are passed down, he taught me how to use this scythe." he said, earning a smile from Kushina. "You know what, Reiden? You're a good guy when you try," she smiled, making Reiden roll his eyes at his little, cute, terrifying student. This would be their first and last proper talk, so they both made sure to make the best out of it, and barely noticed the sun going down.
So! Give me your opinion! Really, though, I need someone to tell me what I could do better since I have literally no experience with writing fanficiton. Also, I edited this with input from "Gashadokuro Amanojaku" who is currently my only reviewer. :D
(Still, I -did- get a review in the first 3 hours which I wasn't expecting. That's pretty good, I suppose?)
Also, the translations for this chapter:
'Hane Arashi' practically means 'Feather storm'. It's not entirely correct grammar since there would be a lot of conjunctions if it had to be - it's more like a shortened version.
'Tetsu Tsubasa Kabe' somewhat means 'Iron wing wall', but the same applies with this one. 'Tetsu no Tsubasa no Kabe no Jutsu' just sounds ridiculous.
Edit note: Wow. Just wow. I have literally added 2000 words to this chapter, causing it to grow from about 7 word pages to a whopping 11. It also took way more time than I thought it would, so you second-time or first-time or whatever-the-heck-time readers better appreciate it :P
I've fixed a lot of dialogue to make it more consistent with what I want the characters to be like, so it should hopefully be more consistent in the future. The giant fur-ball won't be giving in easily – because that wouldn't be fun.
For those of you who don't know what I mean by "ore-sama" attitude, it's basically someone who is stuck-up and self important, and who believes the world revolves around them. I think that's a pretty good way to summarise it?