Disclaimer: this is in no way affiliated with Maasashi Kishimoto or the Naruto franchise. I have no idea what's really happening with the series anymore. It looks like the new Boruto manga is...not that ok? That I've heard. I dunno, my journey with Naruto really ended with Shippuden. It was a nice end point there~
Rabbits in tall grass.
The Yellow Flash had been missing for seven days.
Three days was not enough time for anyone in Konoha village, or heck — anyone in the entire nation of fire, the entire shinobi world — to be miffed about. Missions went overtime. Missions went awry. Missions were suspended and abandoned and deemed a lost cause all the time. There were dates assigned to each mission — completion dates and expiry dates, dates and times to determine the exact moment where a mission should have been completed or not. Shinobi either stubbornly tried to finish the job, or turned round and headed home whistling a tune or two.
The yellow flash was not a ninja who dawdled or dithered. The yellow flash did not send home a hawk to his waiting wife, to not show up at the great gates when he'd said he would. If Namikaze Minato had said he'd be somewhere, he'd be somewhere.
Thus, the Yellow Flash had been missing for eight days.
The higher ups of Konoha were doing everything in their power to keep hush about it. Having your golden boy drop off the face of the earth in times like this, wasn't good for publicity.
Wasn't good at all.
Uzumaki Kushina did not give two craps about the press or politics. Of course, Minato was more than capable of taking care of himself. That was why she took the first mission on the list that could get her out of Konoha and into the area near the outskirts of the fire country. She couldn't leave it to randoms when she could go trekking into the wilderness herself, of course.
Shadows began to blink on the ground, weaving in-between the rays of light dotted by the canopy above. A rain of shrunken fell from the sky.
"They're here!"
Shrill voice struck her ears. Kushina slammed into the the Konoha ninja on her right, pushing him to the ground behind a tree.
"Multiple enemies! Stay down!" the other voice shouted.
It was supposed to be a simple mission, one that she could finish in a day and go off track to look for Minato. Who knew what kind of poisoned mushroom he could had eaten? When it came to Minato, who knew the kind of trouble he could get himself into?
A hand grasped her throat then, pinning her to the tree trunk as she got off her team mate. The three of them against what? Multiple enemies?
"Kushina-san!"
His name was Gin. Kushina doubted that was his real name, but hey — the things she's seen, she wasn't about to judge. Gin pulled a kunai out of thin air. In one fell swoop, he stabbed it clean through the arm that had slunk through the trunk and was currently choking out Kushina. She dropped to the floor, gasping once. Gin sliced through the tree-arm.
"Get back to the river, Gin, Kiharu!"
What an absolute joke. Kushina had picked a mission that no one could have logically told her: no. It was a seal job — there was a crack in a dam and before the thing could crumble and cause a flood, a small squad of ninja could get to it in record time and fix it. Kushina was the best sealing-master in the village. She suddenly decided she wanted out of her three-year retirement. How could they possibly say 'yes' to a flooded forest?
Kiharu was engaged in hand-to-hand combat with a ninja dressed in full black, head and mouth covered over so that only a slit of eyes showed. Ominous. Nodding at Gin, Kushina neared them, waiting for the mark. Gin's shuriken landed intimately close to the masked-man's temple, shaking him up. Kiharu jolted back in alarm. Kushina slammed her fist into the man's face. They all rocked back, Gin aiming another weapon as Kiharu and Kushina jerked away.
"Run!" Kiharu shouted.
Kushina took her hand and propelled them into the trees.
So it was a chase, then?
"Did you pin down how many enemies there were in the end?" Kiharu said, fixing her forehead protector.
"Hell if I know," Gin called back, "but if that's an illusion, it'll be a damn good one, for sure."
"Not shadow clones," Kushina chimed in, "I shattered that guy's teeth, for sure."
They had fixed the dam and left. And then not half-an-hour later, they were being chased like rabbits in tall grass, in their own country.
"Ok, if anybody touched a random shrine or whatever — you better admit right, freakin' now!"
"No, Kushina."
"Naw, Kushina."
"Hn."
So they were just being chased for the fun of it, she concluded. Kami, she missed retirement.
"Listen," she said, tone a note lower, "we're not going back to the dam. We're going to make a kami-damned distress call and—"
"KUSHINA!" It was Gin who pushed her away this time, catching the full force of a katon blast.
Kushina's mouth parted as she fell.
Gin's scorched body poofed away by substitution jutsu.
Kushina's mouth frowned as she fell.
She batted away Kiharu's hand as she tried to catch her. With a great thud, she landed in the dirt, spiderwebbing the ground with minuscule ravines. "Get Gin and run," she said to her.
Gin appeared at their side, clutching onto a burn wound. The sear of his flesh sent a putrid smell up her nose.
"I can still fight," he said accusatorially.
"I can still fight," she mimicked, a little too mockingly. She knew she was being harsh, but the rest of her team had only just made jonin for two weeks or so. These fledgling jonin flew through the ranks and did not know war. Kushina flinched as she threw a shuriken, making it fly weakly through the sky and land at an enemy's feet. She wasn't making a great impression of herself.
"Keep moving."
She flinched. This was not a war. Why was she acting as though every fight thereafter the big one should be treated as so? Her lips thinned into a tight, surly line. They were still outnumbered; they were still undermanned. This was supposed to be sealing-mission, (with a side of search and rescue) for goodness' sake.
She stopped suddenly, making her teammates skid to a dusty stop in front as she whirled around. A kunai swept through the distance, cutting a snick on the side of her chin. She didn't flinch at it as she continued to pool her power, forcing the flow to culminate in her fingers and vibrate the ends of her long, red hair. Then, something like a flash of red (ha, ha,) ignited, and she slammed a palm into a tree, which slammed into another, and another. A row of wood was uprooted, falling in a heap of long logs over the distance. Not bad for an impromptu blockade.
"Might slow them for a second, let's go." Then she froze, eyes widening as a thought flew into her mind.
"Kushina-san?"
"We're splitting up."
"What?" Kiharu eyed Gin suspiciously.
"Why are you eyeing me? She's the one who came up with the—"
"Whose shrine did you touch?! What kind of artefact did you steal?!" Kiharu fumed at Gin.
"I didn't—"
Kushina slammed her hand into Gin's back, pushing him to collapse into Kiharu. She dabbed a spot of blood from the cut by her chin in the time they fell, pressing a thumbprint into the tree next to them.
"Seal."
The Konoha ninja balked and scrambled to their feet. The second Gin tried to take a step towards Kushina, he was forced back. Kiharu caught his back, grunting. "What did you do to us, Kushina-san?!"
She was right to be accusatory. "You're both too smart to listen to me and split up," Kushina sighed, tilting her head back to the makeshift fort of tree trunks.
"Haven't you noticed?" she said, cautiously, for the first time since the mission had started. Kiharu and Gin looked like crap, but now a squirming, squeezing fear had crept into the light in their eyes, putting out the flame in them.
"They're not coming for you. They're after me." Kushina waved her hands up, tightened the knot of red hair on her head and faced away from them. "And if they're after me, then they know who I am."
Kiharu bashed a fist against the strange peripheries of the open air. Her hand touched upon thin air, to thick air, and she gritted her teeth at the invisible seal. They were trapped.
"You're trapped, but it's ok," Kushina piped up. "You'll be fine. It'll wear off in an hour or so, so head back to the village after that. We finished the mission anyway, so there's nothing to worry about."
"You're getting chased by an army of ninja!"
"You can skip out all the little details in the mission, Gin. Everybody does it, " she smiled.
The make-shift fort was blown apart. All around her was the sound of splintering wood and fire. Kushina leapt away, jerking right. The black-clad ninja all twisted and followed. She smiled. Great. They really were just going to follow her and didn't care about the others.
"Kushina-san!" "Kushina!"
And as their voices drew furtherer and furtherer away, closing like a curtain in the distance, Kushina managed to ignore it until the silence got too loud.
"What do you want?"
Her words cleaved through her clenched teeth, an octave lower and shaking with hostility. The canopy stretched across her head here, blinking little lights over face as she stared empty over the bare grounds.
"I don't hold any Konoha secrets, just to be blunt." She scoffed, swinging the few stray strands of hair out of the way. "And even if I did," she said, for good measure, "I sure as heck wouldn't tell you."
A figure dropped from above, landing heavily and messily on the ground. Behind her, another thud dropped, breaking the earth beneath his feet. She swivelled, moving her head slowly between them and backing up, trying to keep them in view. The point of a kunai tipped the back of her neck, and she ducked frantically, flinging herself back into the open. Another ninja had appeared, this one swift and silent. A couple of red hairs fluttered to the floor from knife-point. Her eyes narrowed, darkening as the sun passed into cloud. Leaving her cold and clammy. Then, one by one, more ninja clothed in black fell from the treetops or appeared from behind a rock — who knew? (And who cared?) Kushina walked around in a shy circle, laying eyes on each and every one of them.
"Hey," she said, straightening up. "I grew that hair, you know."
The shuffle of feet gave him away. Kushina lurched around, putting fist to face before turning around to struck a knee to the gut, then threw one ninja into another. They all came at her. Fists and feet all prodded in her direction, gripping her shoulder and hammering in the backs of her knees. She yelled, muffling the sound behind her teeth. A ninja on her left — she took a hit at his pressure point, subduing him not a moment too soon to whirl around and take down two more. Kushina looped a finger around one of their kunai, used it to cut free a bag of shuriken before she flung it into an elbow. Which wasn't all that smart, she thought, having to shove the hard part of her palm up a chin. They kept getting up, kept fighting. Then she felt it, sure and sharp as anything, the hot sear of knife on her back. She shifted in reflex. A long gash dragged down her side.
"Kkghhn—!"
Had they decided to kill after using non-lethal attacks, finally?
"I don't know who the hell you are or what the hell you want from me, but I've had enough playing by the rules." Kushina raised her hands to her sides, surging forth her power again.
Slowly, shakily, gold-glowing chains began to emit from her centre, curling and clinking as she forced the forbidden jutsu to materialise. And crinkle. And falter. Her face changed a dozen times in the space of a few seconds — urgency, confusion, anger and finally: acceptance — all glossing over in frenzy. The chains retracted and disintegrated. Kushina tilted her head in a sigh, touching a finger over the scrape by her chin. She cleaned her finger over her tongue, neutral expression over her features.
It was just quaint.
"You've poisoned me." Kushina shuddered, stumbling back a few steps as she dragged the chains back within her. Her chakra wasn't like other peoples'. But now every heavier gasp breath, every shudder from her lungs was blunting her chakra down like wind over rock.
It was sacrilege, letting the same jutsu trap her twice, she thought, as pair of arms manifested from the tree behind her, snagging taut around her neck. Kushina raised her fists, wrenching herself free from the hold. She fumbled forward into her enemies.
The moment she replaced her breath, it was knocked out of here before she could gather herself. She didn't need a warning. Kushina took a kick into her solar plexus, skidded to a stop before another hit came at her. Kushina rocked back again, but this time the slam of rock stopped her skid.
"Where is the Yellow Flash?" One the men finally spoke.
Kushina cracked open her eyes in light disbelief. She only caught a glimpse of a blur as the thug's knuckles caught the hollow space under her cheekbone. She fell to the floor, crumpled. Kushina coughed, politely closing hand over mouth.
"So…you can speak. Huh."
Bam.
He threw a punch into her side.
"I don't know where the Yellow Fla-flash is."
Bam.
Foot planted into her stomach, stomping out her breath. Kushina gasped for air.
"I just said I don't know!"
Bam. Bam.
The leader of them all, Kushina supposed, reached down his arm and pulled her up by the collar. At least not my hair. Kushina blinked open an eye and gave her best one-eyed, deadpan look. The masked man drove her into the ground with his fist, making an uncomfortable sound of body-hitting-earth, echo. Her red hair unfurled around her, spilling across the dust as she lifted herself up.
"Look. I don't know where the Yellow Flash is. I don't know where he is right now. I didn't know where he was before we started fighting. I won't know where he is even if you keep bashing me."
Kushina picked up her head, turning to fling a wayward smirk at them all. And then stopped 2/3 of the way as her neck began to cramp. There were about eight men in her line of vision. More behind her. She could feel the stoic-ness of their chakra annoy the 'military' inside her. The war moulded people like that — cold and rigid and the rainbows and butterflies beaten out of them. It had taken a long time to chase that feeling from Minato. She'd done a good job, considering the fact she carried that edge with her wherever she went. Minato was a straight-forward man with straight-forward ideals.
His deadliness came was a completely different from hers. His shone as bright as the sun (and his goddamned hair); Kushina's was borne of secrecy and forbidden jutsu, golden chains that could tear the spirit straight out of people. And without them, and her chakra waning as the drug took affect — she really felt the anger boil under her skin.
Minato was going to get it if she ever got out of this one. And if anyone ever found Minato, that was.
"If you tell me why you want Minato-" she swallowed. Too late to fix the slip. "Look. I want to find the Yellow Flash. You want to find the Yellow flash. That means, inexplicably, we ca—"
Bam.
Kushina coiled into herself, hands grabbing at her abdomen as the pain came back in some spreading shockwave. Her mouth flew open, twisting her face in pain even as no sound came out. She bit her tongue. To hell with letting them hear a single sound from her.
"Give up the location of the Yellow Flash." Was that the same voice? Or different? Kushina couldn't tell.
Bam. Crk. Bam.
Whites flashed through her mind, blinding her through closed eyes.
Oh. Kushina winced through her scowl. They were dummies, the whole lot. It didn't matter if she didn't know the location. They wouldn't stop badgering so long as they thought she might have had a sliver of information in her. Kushina opened her eyes, watching the man step forward and swipe his foot back, ready to heave into her ribs.
All her thoughts ( how to get out alive, et cetera, ) stagnated as she blanked her mind, bracing for the impact.
And the zing of a shuriken whizzed by her head, blazing a trail of wind by her hair and fluttering it backwards.
Kushina opened her eyes just in time to see blood pump onto the floor before her — the man that was about to attack her tugging at his leg with a vessel ruptured. He let his blood run, not good safety practice, really — and spun around to see what Kushina was currently raising her brows at.
All that was discernible was a dash of blue and black.
Or an armoured arm whacking downwards above the shoulders, instantly shocking one of them out. But it didn't stop there. There was a slash of the kunai across under the arm, enough to bleed the man out as he fell unconscious.
A jab of wrist on a pressure point, point of a kunai digging into another man's chest. The ninja pulled it out, flinging it forward before bashing the enemy to the ground and moving onto the next.
Tinge of blue uniform, silver hair, and a lean frame a head shorter than the men falling around him like dolls. It was grace and brutality all rolled up into one growth-spurt-in-session ANBU agent, flinging left-right, right-left as he unsheathed the short katana behind him and slashed diagonally. Without reserve, without remorse.
This ninja was precise as he was deadly, and another kind of deadly from her shadowy forbidden jutsu and the daylight-soldier of his master. Something like the burning tip of a match. Small and destructive.
When her ears stopped ringing from the last knuckle to her head, she shook herself, making the dizziness worse as ninja's words blared into focus along with the sound of bones cracking beneath fist. Blood splattering the floor in extravagant distances.
"You want—"
Bam, bam, bam.
"To know where—"
Boom, bam, crunch; the sound of squeal mincing out of mouth.
"The — Yellow — Flash-"
Crack. Bam.
"Is?"
He turned up his fists suddenly, dropping his last pair of kunai in deliberate, jabbing apathy. Terrible, terrible form.
"In — my — ass."
Hatake Kakashi bashed his fists into the last man's face, pummelling him. He beat him between consciousness. Until nothing could differentiate him from face and mushed fruit. The battered man dropped to the floor, a seemingly half-satisfied Kakashi looking over the field of bodies he'd sown on the barren grounds. Electricity flickered from his fingers, fizzing and searing in rhythm with the tremor from his hands. As if they were clenching in lightning storms. He shook his hands, furled and unfurled them, forcing the crackling energy to dissipate. It took a long time for them to calm.
Blood trickled down his knuckles. Not his blood. His head drooped. He tentatively turned around, face settled in a tight, soulless, mask-over-mask. Kakashi's one-eyed dead-pan look was leagues better than her's, Kushina thought. An awkward beat. And then Kakashi, in all the stoic rigidity of all of the downed men put together, pulled his ANBU mask to the side.
"Please…" he said quietly, "…please don't tell Minato sensei I said that."
That was the most animated Kushina had ever seen Kakashi be. And it was much more brutal than she might have imagined. She wondered why, when the copy ninja was in the top ranks of the ANBU.
Kushina slumped, heartbeat still unsettled. "I'll have a talk to your sensei about your language next time. The asshole."
Notes.
I'm sorry this took so long. Here you go, Guest. I left it thinking I'll get back to it - but I just had no ideas XD So this is kind of a funny little story now - I actually think the tone changed to go in line with my other Naruto fic - Sakura. I'll try my hardest to update when I can - but just be aware I'm so buuuusy whhhyyyy. Thank you so much for your read! Do let me know your thoughts~ Did you like it? I'm open to criticism.
Until next time then,
- earl