Chapter Twenty-One

(Fifteen Years Old)

Kazeshini burst silently through the open window they had entered and left at a swift sprint with Itsui and Yuri trailing behind her. They could hear calling and yelling in the area where her team had almost been compromised by those curious and playful children, so Kazeshini assumed a worried parent had gone out looking after that startled chakra burst and still hadn't found the three children.

Kazeshini silently urged her teammates to run faster, trying to leave as fast as possible. She jumped quickly from tree to tree, she saw a small clearing that was a little too big to jump across so she jumped midway with her teammates just behind her doing the same thing. Her leg muscles were already clenching in the reflex to jump again when a brace of kunai flew through the air to block her jump. She reflexively blocked the kunai and jumped forward, trying to run away swiftly.

A lucky patrol unit had spotted them escaping and tried stopping them. However, Kazeshini was in no mood to get into a flashy showdown with the other ninja when it would be easier to just outrun them. Itsui and Yuri followed her lead and didn't bother even halting their pace as they blew past the other ninja.

"Trespassers!" One of the ninja called out, giving chase while flinging their weapons around trying to get a lucky shot.

Kazeshini set a fast pace, however these ninja seemed to be good sprinters. While they might not have the stamina to keep up on a long distance chase, they had enough speed to overrun the three Uzumaki's and force an engagement. Kazeshini continued on, trying to get distance between what would be a fight and any incoming reinforcements.

They raced forward until the patrol unit had caught up with their fast sprint and were practically nipping at the three Uzumaki's heels. Kazeshini spun around quickly, and with burst of chakra condensed and shaped into thick chakra chains that burst from her back to catch the enemy nin off guard. Her blue chakra chains, made from thick links that were entwined and weaved with much smaller and delicate looking chains, were each tipped with two straight, one sided blades (A/N: like the Spear of Longinus from Evangelion only blue colored). Kazeshini's spear headed chakra chain pierced through the unsuspecting bodies of two of the nin pursuing her and her team, blood spurting from their bodies before they dropped lifelessly to the forest floor.

The last nin gave a cry of anger as he barely dodged, having been far enough away to see the attack coming and react.

"Tch, I seem to need more training with my chakra chains." Kazeshini scowled darkly and dodged the jet of water the enemy nin had shot at her. Itsui came up from behind his team lead and with a well-timed chakra technique, the last nin fell dead while his attention had been focused on Kazeshini. "Let's go, we've wasted enough time."

Kazeshini made to jump and start a swift pace back home, but over a dozen nin had them surrounded. The enemy had been following the trail left by the now dead patrol unit and their swift sprinting skills, which were faster than the three Uzumaki's, allowed them to catch up rapidly which was unfortunate as they didn't have the stamina for any sort of long distance chase. Their sprint had been fast enough to catch up and surround Kazeshini and her two teammates but not before Itsui had killed the third nin.

Kazeshini scowled and made a hand sign to her two teammates. Itsui and Yuri used a simple shunshin to suddenly appear back to back with head other along with Kazeshini to form a triangle formation on the forest floor where they had all shunshined down to for an easily defensive position.

"Hmph, fucking trespassers, you should have stayed home suckling on your mothers' tits, kiddies." The lead shinobi called out, trying to get a rise out of the three Uzumaki.

Kazeshini scowled but easily ignored the enemy shinobi while addressing her teammates, "They've seen us so no survivors. Understood?"

"Understood." Yuri and Itsui acknowledged.

The three Uzumaki drew their weapons and prepared for a fight. Kazeshini drew out her katana, since her nodachi was still in the works and not yet completed. She held the weapon so the black silk wrapped handle was held firmly in one hand while the other held the scabbard so as to prepare for an Iaijutsu technique that could come out fast and dangerous. Kazeshini crouched down with one foot in front of the other, gripping her scabbard just a little tighter as she shifted, and eyed the enemy shinobi with disdain.

Wind blew through the trees causing the leaves to rustle as if caught in a wave, and the enemy ninja were all taut as a bowstring where they stood above the three Uzumaki in the trees. An unseen signal had all the enemy shinobi jumping with either hand seals flashing or weapons raised while the three Uzumaki gave their own counter-attacks.

Kazeshini had charged her katana with chakra and with a quick swing into a picture perfect Iaido draw; she had forced a crescent of crackling chakra to cut through the space in front of her. Out of the five attacking her, two were caught by her initial wide-range technique and fell twitching as if caught by a seizure from the electricity coursing through their bodies. However, those two were dead before they even hit the ground, the slice of the Iaido technique having cut them open near in half even as the electricity of the attack fried them from the inside out.

The other three dodged and attacked quickly, trying to kill her with different earth and water techniques. She jumped above a massive spear of earth which would have skewered her through the chest, and used her katana to attack the shinobi coming from her left. That ninja spit out some sort of high-powered water jet that Kazeshini dodged before swinging her weapon behind her back to block a thrown kunai.

Kazeshini dodged a kick, swinging the blade of her katana to give solid swipe to her taijutsu attacker. The hit was blocked by a kunai and so she was forced into a high-speed battle while she was forced to dodge the ninjutsu attacks from her other two opponents. With a deft flick of her katana, the shuriken that had been thrown at her was deflected and she had to dodge another hit by the taijutsu nin.

An arrow came speeding towards her and nearly knocked her flat as it split part of the armor on her back and punctured into her chest.

With a scream, Kazeshini used another wide ranged technique with her katana that was dodged by her three opponents. Luckily, it gave her the space she needed to do a faster and more precise technique. She spun her katana around herself and charged the blade with water natured chakra, forcing a rope of water to form from the tip of the blade. Charged with lightning from a fuin seal near her hand, the long water whip cackled darkly before Kazeshini swung her weapon and wrapped the water whip around the annoying taijutsu user.

The man screamed long and loud as electricity shocked him, and Kazeshini raced forward to plunge her blade into the man's torso. She released the technique to turn the blade around and thrust its tip behind her to cut through an earth jutsu with a slice of chakra. The earth wall that had raced to crush her, split in two and Kazeshini was safe from being crushed. Mud balls flew through the air and Kazeshini had to put her strength into deflecting the mud from hurting her.

Walls of water tried to surround her, but Kazeshini only jumped away. A ninja had been waiting for her to ump and Kazeshini barely had time to bring her katana in front of her to block a fist encased in stone. Another fist dodged under the blade of her katana and smacked into her gut.

"Agh!" Kazeshini cried, blood coughing out from her badly damaged organs, and she was slammed into the ground where the walls of water then crashed down on her, trying to drown her in the fierce torrents of the technique.

"Kazeshini!" Yuri cried out in anger and tried battling their attackers even harder, her chakra chains whipping around to crush her opponents but were constantly being dodged. Itsui was also trying harder to get to Yuri, who he had great teamwork with, and Kazeshini, who was the team leader despite her younger age for missions when Hisane wasn't around.

Coughing blood, Kazeshini scowled darkly at her attackers, she blew air from her nose which bubbled upwards as she was still trapped underwater. With a bit of applied chakra, Kazeshini swung her katana to dispel the jutsu. Her weight seal had been deactivated ever since the mission had begun back in Uzu; no need to have a handicap when she could be attacked at any moment when out on a mission, so she was pissed that these shinobi could keep up no matter the rigorous and hellish training she and her teammates went through.

The jutsu was dispelled and Kazeshini had just blown it up with her own technique so it fell like rain on everyone fighting.

"Sequence Seven!" Kazeshini yelled before swiping the blood from her chin onto a seal on the handle of her katana. Yuri and Itsui easily heard Kazeshini's yell and they both quickly jumped away from the water soaking everyone. With a loud cry, Kazeshini stabbed her lightning covered katana into the water soaked ground which lit up every single enemy nin who were unprepared for the attack.

Six shinobi fell, collapsed as the lightning shocked them enough to paralyze them. That was enough for Kazeshini to release her katana and form the hand seals for a water technique. "Water Style: Drowning Lake!" From her mouth, Kazeshini spit out enough water to fill a small lake, drowning the collapsed nin who lay paralyzed underwater. The water formed a dome shape, encompassing every single combatant in water tall enough to cover the trees in the area.

The dome's membrane was just chakra, keeping the water in the tall dome shape without collapsing as Kazeshini kept it constantly fed with her won chakra to stabilize the mass of water. The enemy shinobi had no way of escaping before they were entrapped by the technique but Itsui and Yuri had already known what would happen and were safely standing on top of the water dome where the only place not covered in a chakra membrane was located, a weak spot if one knew to look for it.

A taijutsu shinobi swam swiftly, almost unimpeded by the chakra laced water, and tried attacking Kazeshini who was preparing her final technique.

Sequence seven first starts as a quick shock to the enemy when in overwhelming odds, then a technique to drown the shocked nin, and finally another technique to finish off the last of the nin entrapped by the second technique. The guidelines were up to interpretation on how exactly one executes the sequence of techniques, but it is mainly a warning that Hisane had come up with along with eleven other sequences used for various scenarios.

Kazeshini smirked and changed a good portion of the chakra inside her body into lightning before expelling it all in one great burst. Everything within the dome was electrified. Those few that might have survived were paralyzed by the shock and died from drowning, unable to move and escape.

With a wince, Kazeshini released the technique and so the water dome collapsed. Itsui and Yuri landed safely on either side of Kazeshini who was spitting out a glob of blood on the ground.

"Let's go, we need to leave." Kazeshini said while wincing and feeling for the arrowhead that was lodged in her back, the arrow shaft having broken when she was smacked into the ground.

Yuri and Itsui nodded and followed Kazeshini in a fast sprint as they quickly ran back home, both thinking that the stupid scripture scroll retrieval mission should have been shoved down the client's throat when it was given to the team. It had said only light chance of shinobi interference, not the major fight they had just gone through.

Halfway across the Land of Rice, they were ambushed by a different group of nin. These were fire users and they loved spitting fire and throwing explosives everywhere. Exhausted and with Kazeshini slightly injured as she didn't have the full motion of one of her arms because of the arrow head still embedded in the muscle of her back, they were forced to fight since there was no outrunning these ninja who were as fresh as daisies.

Kazeshini started the fight with a wide ranged swipe of crescent shaped lightning chakra from her katana's blade. She caught only one with the attack and the group of five nin was down to four. Kazeshini growled as she twisted her body around to dodge the fireballs that had been sent her way. Luckily they weren't in a forest but on a rocky cliff top, that meant no forest to burn down around their ears.

Istui was attacked by the taijutsu nin, one who used some sort of technique to cause explosions whenever he touched something. The first and only time Itsui threw a kunai at the nin, the kunai was turned into hot shrapnel that tried peppering the area in front of the enemy nin twice the speed that the kunai was thrown originally.

Yuri was attacked by an older woman, one who seemed to enjoy spitting fire just about everywhere. It was also some sort of flammable syrup so it stuck to everything and continued burning for an entire minute before dying out. Yuri was also being attacked by an earth user who was throwing rock spikes around like candy, and setting mud traps everywhere so the footing was always treacherous.

Kazeshini herself had gotten a shinobi who seemed to enjoy throwing explosive tags everywhere which were made from sloppy seal work making them dangerous but not as damaging as an Uzumaki explosive tag, and he was apparently from the same clan as the woman attacking Yuri. So, not only did he throw explosive tags everywhere, but he spit fiery syrup everywhere which caused the tags to explode which then caused the flammable syrup to go flying everywhere.

More than once, Kazeshini had been saved from small little burns from the splatter of the flaming syrup because of her armor. She was constantly dodging globs of flaming syrup but it was impossible to dodge all the little drops since they seemed to be falling like rain. It didn't help that the nin had spit out a technique that was exactly like rain save that he used the flammable syrup.

Kazeshini gave a grunt, sweat breaking out on her forehead and burns marking little spots all over her body, and she swung her katana with a wave of lightning chakra at the enemy nin.

The shinobi just laughed as he dodged, "You can do better than that kitten! I want to see you scream before I'm through with you; this is just too much fun!"

Kazeshini struggled to catch her breath as she dodged another whip made from the flammable syrup.

Now, Kazeshini was pissed.

Not only had they been found out as they were fleeing the scene of their robbery and gotten chased down by fucking sprinters… sprinters who were fast enough short distance to catch up to Kazeshini and her team (a team who had more stamina than speed compared to that clan), they had then gotten ambushed by another group of ninja who seemed to be fighting more for the thrill and bloodlust than anything else. On top of that, Kazeshini had gotten hurt and her team was exhausted.

Itsui was running of fumes and Yuri had just gotten stabbed by a kunai to the thigh so she was barely surviving in her fight.

Kazeshini was hurt, exhausted, and pissed beyond belief that no matter how much she trained, it seemed like there were monsters everywhere she looked. She suspected there were so many "S-class" ninja because everyone was constantly fighting. Therefore, because everyone was fighting, those few exceptional who survived were the best of the best. Unfortunately, Kazeshini was not yet the best of the best. In fact, she was barely a pup in the grand scheme of things, especially compared to the monsters like Madara and Hashirama were going to be.

For now, Kazeshini focused mainly on trying to stay alive.

With blood from one of the many cuts that littered what little skin wasn't armored, Kazeshini unsealed a barrier tag from a seal on her bracer with a grunt and a sharp tug of chakra, so much chakra that she felt lightheaded, and she trapped the shinobi behind a bubble of chakra. Once trapped the nin would be ensnared for at least two minutes, two minutes being the equivalent to years of time in such a high pace fight, Kazeshini ran to her teammates to help while unstrapping the armor from around her belly.

The bits of armor fell while she ran to Yuri first, and Kazeshini swiped blood on her chakra seal to release a specific seal out of eight. It was the most dangerous seal she had ever created.

Nature chakra and her own chakra exploded through the seal, and from that seal, amazing things began to happen.

The seal's entire purpose was to enhance and convince every single cell in her body that it was something else. Four out of the eight prongs she had encircling her nature chakra storage seal were transformation seals, seals that had taken years of trial and error. Still, she only had one seal currently actually usable since the other three were more likely to kill her than help. Even the one she was using now was not complete.

The seal allowed for lightning to course through every single cell in her body, and the nature chakra helped to convince each cell that it was made of lightning and not actual flesh. It was a last resort seal at the moment, taking too much chakra and too hard of a toll on her body to use for more than a minute.

From her seal, chakra seeped through her body and seemed to ooze ever so slowly through every single cell in her body. It wasn't quick, and it wasn't painless. Electric charged chakra oozed at what seemed to be the speed of molasses, and Kazeshini could feel it as her entire body seemed to be changed.

Kazeshini let out a scream of pain, vocal cords tearing with the force of her scream, and nearly dropped to her knees just ready to give from the torture the seal was causing her. However, it was over within seconds, though to Kazeshini it had felt like an hour of torture, before she was left gasping for air and feeling like she was hyped up on more drugs than an overdosed junkie.

Yuri had fought a little harder, trying to get to her team leader as Yuri thought that Kazeshini had been hurt, but Kazeshini was up and running before Yuri could actually do anything.

Kazeshini didn't even bother dodging the sticky, flammable syrup that had been shot at her from the kunoichi fighting Yuri. It would have taken time that Kazeshini didn't actually have, especially when she didn't actually need to dodge. Her entire body had been transformed and each cell had been convinced it was actually made of lightning, so there wasn't actually much there to hit. Kazeshini's body had an innate glow to it as the flaming syrup flew through her body, surprising everyone in the clearing.

"Don't touch my team!" Kazeshini screamed while jumping forward, her hand piercing into the kunoichi who had been fighting Yuri much like one Hatake Kakashi's Chidori and Raikiri strikes.

The kunoichi gave a piercing scream, electricity coursing through her entire body and cooking her from the inside out even as Kazeshini pulled her hand out of the woman's chest to run to Yuri's other attacker.

He quickly formed a mud wall and then another and another. Kazeshini, too hyped up on chakra like she was, didn't even bother jumping over or around the mud walls but instead just ran right through them. She wasn't thinking straight, and instead of doing things smart she was doing things much harder. However, her tactless waste of energy didn't matter since she had enough momentum to body bash into the shinobi even through the multiple mud walls.

The shinobi flew a few dozen feet before rolling across the ground, dead and his body twitching from the residual electricity.

Kazeshini turned to the shinobi attacking Itsui, and she ran as fast as she could, practically a glowing black shadow with red streaks from her hair that had escaped its confines and from the red scarf around her neck.

The enemy had caught up to Itsui in his desperation, having seen his two teammates die at Kazeshini's hand, and gave a dark smirk before jumping back with a call, "Katsu!"

"Nooo!" Kazeshini shrieked as she sped forward, her hand piercing through the enemy nin's neck too late to stop the explosion which blew half of Itsui's torso apart in a shower of gore. Yuri was screaming in the background and the enemy shinobi Kazeshini had trapped under her barrier tag escaped.

"You fucking bitch!" He yelled out angrily, drawing Kazeshini's attention, her eyes having been glued onto the dead form of her teammate.

Yuri had practically been handicapped by her previous fight, and she was too exhausted to fight off the last shinobi. The enemy nin had taken advantage of Kazeshini's shock and grief to attack and capture Yuri. He held a kunai to Yuri's neck and she tried struggling free without any results.

"Bitch, I was gonna kill you and be done with it, but now I wanna take my time torturing you! How dare you kill my team! Surrender or I'll slit this pretty kunoichi's throat!" He yelled out while facing Kazeshini, eyeing his opponent carefully.

Kazeshini clenched her fists and jaw tightly, she watched her enemy carefully while Yuri continued struggling. "Don't do it! Kazeshini, don't you do anyth-" Yuri screamed out before she was cut off with a punch to her skull and a large hand began choking her. Yuri could do nothing as her vision doubled from an instant concussion and her air supply cut off.

"Surrender bitch or her blood will be on your hands!" The shinobi shouted, growling darkly as he continued choking the young woman in his grip.

Yuri gasped as the grip around her neck was loosened enough to allow her to breathe, and as her vision cleared, she saw Kazeshini kneeling on the ground to surrender. Kazeshini had no chance of rescuing Yuri in a frontal charge, not with her time nearly completely run out with her transformation.

The shinobi stepped forward slowly, "Don't even think of moving, bitch." He warned as he kept a kunai against Yuri's neck. However, he quickly dropped her to the ground before getting even closer to Kazeshini.

He kicked down with one leg, stopping Yuri in her tracks as she had tried crawling away, and a loud crack sounded from where he had stomped down.

Yuri screamed as he broke her leg without a second thought, before making a quick clone that pressed Yuri's head into the dirt ready to crush her skull. He stepped forward slowly, ninja wire ready to tie up Kazeshini.

Once he was within five steps, Kazeshini leapt forward with a powerful enough push to crack the ground beneath her feet as she propelled herself at her enemy. Then Kazeshini's seal dissipated as she flew through the air at her enemy.

She glared harshly and growled out, "I would never leave my comrade behind." She brought her hand forward and with the last electrically charged chakra gathered into her finger tips, pierced through the breastbone of her enemy and pierced directly into his heart.

The clone dissipated into mud, covering Yuri's head and upper body which she pushed herself out of while clutching at her leg. Kazeshini had fallen onto her victim, unmoving and nearly unconscious.

Too much chakra had gone through her body and so most of her body such as organ tissue, muscle tissue and even bone were torn or fractured. The seal might be able to convince her cells they were actually lightning, but it wasn't a smooth transition when her cells were suddenly flesh again once the chakra flow stopped. It hurt to move or even breath at this point for Kazeshini, so she refused to move much at all.

Even her chakra coils were shot, having been pumped full of so much chakra that they had been stretched and then burnt out by the electricity.

Tears escaped her and she let out a tortured whimper as Kazeshini rolled off the dead body of the shinobi, falling to his side. She cried harder as she brought her hand up to her belly once more to unlock the chakra seal and then dragged it across the prong to change that stored chakra into healing chakra. The seal was probably the most simple of all the seals she had created, as it was natural to be able to change regular chakra into its healing counterpart with only a bit of practice.

Her seal negated having to concentrate to manually change her chakra, and the seal just automatically changed the chakra that she was siphoning through. Kazeshini was coaxing the last dregs of chakra she had stored in the main seal, the lightning transformation having been cut off when the amount of chakra reached the bottom ten percent, and simply had to use the last of her own chakra to guide the healing chakra to certain areas at a time instead of letting it run off on its own.

Having been practicing at the hospital to learn the various med-nin techniques, Kazeshini was quite well versed in using healing chakra. She would be the first to admit that she wouldn't be curing poisons or diseases anytime soon, not knowing enough to do much, but she was experienced enough to coax her already existing cells to multiply with very quick cell mitosis. She didn't have enough building blocks or nutrients in her body to waste on fixing everything, so Kazeshini focused on connecting and repairing bones and ligaments.

Once those were repaired, she used the last of any spare biological nutrients such proteins and carbohydrates to fix organs and muscles. However everything had just been a patch job, nothing she had worked on was actually completely repaired.

Kazeshini couldn't help letting tears escape as it was so painful to even stand, but she managed to get to her feet only to walk a few yards to get to Itsui. Her teammate was dead, there was no way around that, and all Kazeshini could do was pull a sealing scroll from her storage pouch and seal his remains. She drew a black band around either end of the scroll and labeled his name clearly on the front.

Picking herself up, Kazeshini quickly sealed the remains of the five enemy shinobi into a separate scroll from Itsui before collecting her katana and armor she had dropped earlier and walking to Yuri.

Yuri was crying silently, hands fisting the ground at her sides and she hadn't dared touching her leg which was bent and obviously broken right at the thigh. Kazeshini unlocked her healing seal again, the seal having cut off the moment she stopped using the healing chakra like the seal had been designed for, and guided the aloe green chakra to Yuri's leg. With a twist, Kazeshini had straightened Yuri's leg, causing the young woman to give out a cry of pain, before using the chakra to patch up the nasty break which had actually been a shattered thigh and knee cap.

Kazeshini tore her scarf off from around her neck and used her tanto to help secure Yuri's leg and keep it immobile.

"Did you get Itsui?" Yuri asked, tears making lines down her face from where they cleaned up the dirt and blood on her cheeks.

"Yes, I did."

Yuri only gave an exhausted but distressed smile, tears rushing down her cheeks while Kazeshini gave her teammate an equally exhausted and devastated smile back, "I think we should head back home right about now. Let's get you up and on my back."

Yuri nodded while Kazeshini helped her stand onto her one good leg before she frowned and tears flowed harder, "I want to go home Kazeshini-chan." Yuri was crying while she fisted the fabric of Kazeshini's top.

Kazeshini nodded, "Ya, let's go." She squatted carefully and let Yuri get on her back. Kazeshini gripped at her teammate carefully while Yuri wrapped her arms around Kazeshini's neck and shoulders.

With a slow start, Kazeshini started walking away from their battlefield. It took a few minutes before Kazeshini had reached a tree line and she jumped up into the branches. She hopped smoothly from branch to branch, being careful not to disturb her passenger whose barely patched leg wouldn't allow for any sort of weight or pressure without shattering again.

Kazeshini continued running through the trees for hours, not daring to actually stop even when it got dark. She already knew that she was travelling at a snail's crawl, because of how injured and exhausted she still was and how injured and exhausted Yuri was.

She wouldn't stop to heal herself again until she reached the safety of the Uzumaki village. Using the healing chakra took far too much concentration when she needed all her concentration to sensing for enemies. Even when she didn't have to convert her own chakra into healing chakra, just guiding it took far too much concentration than she was comfortable using when she had another person relying on her to stay alert.

Without stop, Kazeshini ran through the rest of the day and night. At that point, her own chakra and nature chakra had been filtered into her stomach seal so she stopped to use a slow release attachment seal, the seventh of her eight total extra attachment seals. The nature chakra was so much more powerful than her own chakra, so she was given a major boost that energized her while using it fast enough not to even have the remotest risk of turning to stone.

With the extra boost from nature chakra mixed with her own chakra, Kazeshini burst forward far faster than before.

Luckily, the extra boost from her nature chakra seal allowed Kazeshini to outrun their pursuers who had been following a few hours after Kazeshini and Yuri had left the battlefield.

Kazeshini ran without stop until they came to the coast. Yuri had helpfully gotten out some ration bars for them to eat since Kazeshini was using her hands to hold Yuri up on her back. Once on the coastline Kazeshini sped across the sands, her footprints getting erased by the waves that splashed up onto the sand. She ran for over an hour across the beach until she saw a small Uzumaki owned port town.

The port town was one of two that the Uzumaki helped patrol and guard which earned the Uzumaki a protection fee from both towns. Along with that, the small port towns had the few ships that could easily sail through the whirlpools because of specially designed seals. These ships were used mainly for trade and the occasional charter to and from Uzu.

Kazeshini slowed down so she was walking as she stepped through one of the entrances into the village. "Yuri, my storage scroll has some money which we can pay for a charter to Uzu."

Yuri nodded and reached under her where she was actually almost sitting on Kazeshini's supply pouch. She pulled out the scroll and unraveled it carefully until she came to the storage seal labeled 'money.'

"Just write in the amount of money in the blank space with blood and then use chakra to release it, I carry all the money in notes of one-thousand."

(A/N: 1000 ryo is about 100 US dollars)

Yuri nodded and released four-thousand ryo from the seal, enough to get a charter to Uzu.

Kazeshini walked to the docks, and immediately walked to a group of joking sailors who were all laughing around while playing cards. "Excuse me, but we are looking to charter a skiff to Uzu as soon as possible." Kazeshini looked up and saw the clouds moving in the opposite direction the winds closer to the ground were moving, "If we leave now, we could make it before a storm hits."

One of the sailors stood up, "Costs fifteen-hundred each."

"You get extra if you can get us to Uzu as fast as possible." Kazeshini replied while Yuri handed three notes over while waving the fourth note from over Kazeshini's shoulder.

The sailor nodded with a grin before waving Kazeshini over to a specific ship. His boat was small, a skiff, and its sails were already unfurled. Kazeshini jumped carefully onto the boat and set Yuri down into a seat before walking to the dock to untie the ship from the dock. The sailor stood at the wheel and helped guide the ship away while Kazeshini jumped onto the deck.

The sailor seemed to understand the mood and stayed silent while catching as much wind as he was able to propel the skiff forward. The closer they got to home, the darker both Yuri and Kazeshini's mood became. Yuri was fingering Itsui's body scroll, not having let it out of her sight the moment Kazeshini had handed it over upon request.

The skiff sailed in and out of the whirlpools, the constant and almost violent up and down motion had both kunoichi using chakra to stick to their seats while the sailor had strapped himself to the wheel. However they seemed to only be sailing in choppy seas instead of the powerful whirlpools which were roaring loudly and dangerously. The seals on the keel of the boat were designed to reject the pulling and spinning power of the whirlpools so they were quite safe while in the ship, though they would be sucked down to the depths if they fell overboard.

It took only six hours to see the docks of Uzu, the tailwinds caused from the building storms speeding them along and cutting an eight hour journey down two hours.

Once they were docked, Kazeshini helped Yuri onto her back again and paid the sailor the fourth thousand ryo note. She leapt forward to the clan head's office, and ignored all murmuring that followed her since it seemed that everyone noticed that Itsui was missing.

Yuri knocked politely onto the clan head's office door, since Kazeshini's hands were full holding Yuri onto her back, and they waited a minute before being called in.

"Report." Uzumaki Saito said while he sat behind his desk dressed in fine silk robes going over a few other mission scrolls.

Kazeshini gave a polite nod since she couldn't give a full bow while Yuri was on her back. "Sir, the mission was complete but it went FUBAR before we started. Three children nearly compromised our position so we subdued without killing however one child let out a burst of chakra before being knocked unconscious. We continued the mission after disguising the three children and collected the mission objective before setting a genjutsu seal to disguise the theft." Yuri handed over the scroll which had the texts in it but kept the scroll which they had used to seal everything else.

"We escaped without being caught but ran into a five man patrol team during our escape. They had some sort of internal kekkei genkei that had them sprinting much faster than we were capable of. We had more stamina so we could have outrun them if it was a matter of distance but they were able to overrun us in the short distance sprint. We killed them easily enough however reinforcements came before we could flee the scene. They were killed shortly thereafter but we sustained light injuries as well as coming out exhausted.

"We were headed back to Uzu when halfway; we came across another patrol team from some other clan who could spit flammable sticky syrup." Kazeshini gestured for Yuri to pass over the scroll containing the five bodies of their enemies, "We were already exhausted and I was injured so we struggled during the battle. Yuri had gotten hurt a minute into the fight and so I put a barrier against the shinobi I was facing to activate a lightning conversion seal that I then used to defeat the two shinobi facing Yuri. The shinobi fighting Itsui had some sort of blood line that allowed him to explode whatever he touched and I ran to help him in his fight when he was killed by an explosion."

Yuri gripped the body scroll holding Itsui tighter before releasing it to stand it carefully on the clan head's desk and Kazeshini gripped Yuri tighter against her back.

"I killed that shinobi however the one I had originally been fighting escaped the barrier and had subdued Yuri to use as a hostage while I was emotionally compromised by Itsui's death. From there, I surrendered to spare Yuri's life where the shinobi shattered Yuri's leg. I then killed him when he got close enough trying to tie me with ninja wire. After that, I helped patch Yuri's leg and made a nonstop trip back to Uzu."

The clan head was silent while Kazeshini stood stiff, waiting for her verdict.

"The mission was accomplished even with Uzumaki Itsui's death and a funeral will be held in a week as is standard. Here is your mission payment." The red headed clan leader handed over a stack of bills he had stored in a drawer. "Check yourselves into the hospital for a check-up. Dismissed."

Kazeshini carried Yuri carefully, her feet dragging in the ground as she made her way to the clinic. Once there, an Uzumaki checked them both over and Yuri's leg was set in plaster to keep it straight and hopefully so it wouldn't be broken again in its delicate state as Kazeshini had only done a patch job. The doctors had more immediate cases they needed their attention on so Yuri and Kazeshini were released quickly.

"I'm giving my share to Itsui's family." Kazeshini stated while looking at Yuri, "Keep your share since you will be off the mission list for a few weeks or more because of your leg."

Yuri grit her teeth but nodded in understanding, "I'm going home. I don't want to be around when that pompous noble comes around for his stupid sacred texts." Yuri spit at the ground before turning around to head home while hobbling on her crutches.

Kazeshini turned to Itsui's home and family house before heading there as quick as she could lift her aching feet.

She was covered in blood and cuts, her clothes were torn and her armor dented and scratched up in places. Her hair was a frightful mess and she probably stunk to high heaven. Kazeshini had bags under her eyes from not sleeping well for the first half of her mission and then not sleeping at all as she fled with Yuri across the continent back to Uzu.

All in all, she was an exhausted, frightful, stressed out mess. Kazeshini was also personally going to see Itsui's family and give her condolences. Once at Itsui's family home, she knocked politely and was ushered into the sitting room to wait while Itsui's parents and wife came out.

Kazeshini swallowed heavily at the sight of Itsui's wife who was heavily pregnant with Itsui's second child, the first who Kazeshini had babysat only twice since she had been highly uncomfortable near small children and was only needed since no one else could watch the small babe.

Looking at Itsui's family, Kazeshini could already tell they understood that something had gone wrong on the mission. With tears dripping down her face, Kazeshini prostrated herself in front of the family with her forehead pressed flat against the ground in dogeza and with the money earned from the mission pushed out in front of her. "I must give my condolences. I was not strong enough to save Itsui and his death is on my hands. The clan head, Saito-sama, is currently in possession of Itsui's body and the only reparation I can give is the mission earnings as Itsui-san can no longer help provide for his family."

Kazeshini was crying into the floor silently.

"I am sorry I could not bring him back alive."

Itsui's family was crying and Kazeshini could hear Itsui's wife getting up to leave, weeping and wailing out her distress. Kazeshini stayed with her face to the ground until a hand touched her shoulder.

"Thank you for bringing his body back." Spoke Itsui's father, tears shining visibly in his eyes though he was too proud to allow them to fall in front of a non-family member. Kazeshini stood up and gave a deep bow before leaving quickly, heading home to throw the scroll full of loot from the mission in the corner of her room to sort later.

Kazeshini scowled darkly as she untied her armor and put it in a pile on the ground outside near her smithing area so it would be repaired later. With a quick bath, cleaning and using plenty of a nice muscle-relaxant cream that helped to sooth sore muscles as well as helping keep any scars elastic instead of stiff. She braided wet hair so it wouldn't get tangled, and shuffled off to her room as quick as a zombie to collapse in bed.

Clutching one of her stuffed tigers like a small child, Kazeshini fell asleep crying.