A/N: Enjoy the quick update! This chapter was originally part of chapter 20, but when it started getting on to 20,000 words, I decided to split them up. And to clarify something from the last chapter; Yuuhi would be Kurenai's father, and Gekko is a female relative of Gekko Hayate. Let's say it's his sister. :D
The Girl From Whirlpool
Chapter Twenty-One: Capture, part II
Gekko had been having quite a bad week so far. Her commander had been kidnapped, his replacement seemed to think she was some kind of indentured tea lady instead of a jonin, and she had looked up her symptoms in the medical encyclopaedia and she definitely had mountain syndrome and about two weeks left to live if her self-diagnosis was correct. It was not with pleasure that she was called forth to report yet another failure to all the Higher-Ups who'd arrived at their small outpost looking for answers and accountability. The search and rescue squads couldn't trace their missing commander and every day that passed was making the a dead trail even colder.
It was as the new commander was turning to her, no doubt to ask her to fetch everyone another round of tea, when something extraordinarily heavy landed in her lap and her vision filled with blond.
"Sorry!" Minato called apologetically when she careened across the room, wheezing as she rummaged through her pockets for her inhaler. A circle of astonished faces stared at him, and looking around he realised he'd appeared in his own cabin in the middle of some kind of meeting. His desk had been swept clean and turned into a conference table, and besides Gekko and Yuuhi he counted his substitute, three ANBU captains minus their masks and one Hatake Sakumo sitting beside his very own sensei – the latter of whom appeared more amused than astonished. Judging by all the papers on the desk they were very engrossed in search and rescue plans.
"A little help, please," he said, motioning his bound hands at them.
Sakumo was the first to get over his surprise and stood up. "Cut him loose."
Yuuhi drew a kunai and carefully severed the straps cutting into Minato's wrists, but even when they fell away and the raw welts beneath were laid bare he had trouble extending his fingers. Pain shot through every bone and tendon like fire. One of the ANBU captains of the medical division came forward and immediately began to ease the wounds with his cooling chakra.
Another of the ANBU captains rose from her seat beside Sakumo. "How good of you to join us," she said, perplexed. "We were just discussing you."
"Organising a party to celebrate – I mean, commiserate your disappearance," said Jiraiya with a devious twinkle in his eyes.
"Sorry to spoil your plans," Minato responded.
Sakumo interrupted them impatiently. "Your report?"
"I was being held in a Kumo base about twelve miles away to the north-east of here. Initially they were attempting to exchange me for Uzumaki Kushina though when that failed they attempted to interrogate me."
"Yes, we got the strange ransom note," said Jiraiya, relaxing back in his chair. "The Hokage didn't think the terms were very agreeable. Sorry about that. I told him not to worry, I had every faith you'd fight your way out eventually."
"What rubbish!" the ANBU captain exploded at him. "You've been running around like a headless chicken all week! When you weren't shouting at the new recruits and reducing them to tears you were off sobbing in a corner yourself!"
"Libel!" declared Jiraiya furiously, springing upright again.
Sakumo's sharp tone cut through the room once more. "That aside... Minato, your return is a great relief and we can talk about this more tomorrow after you've rested and recuperated. Right now it is our job to mobilise a force quickly and move in on this base. Even though Kumo no doubt sanctioned this, they've officially dissociated themselves with the ones responsible, which means we can deal with them as we wish. Kumo needs to be shown what happens when they kidnap our people and try to extort us."
"Kumo's planning an invasion soon," Minato told him. "They won't be keeping up the peaceful pretence for much longer."
"How do you know this?" asked the ANBU captain.
"My captor was a very senior member of Kumo's intelligence section and a little too forthcoming when he thought I had no chance of escape. But since I'd given Gekko one of my kunai, I was able to leave at any time. I stuck around as long as I could to learn the reasons for wanting to abduct me and Kumo's plans in general." When the medical captain stepped away from him, Minato paused to look down at his hands, still badly marked and stinging but at least he could flex his fingers fully. "Oh, thank you, that's much better. Anyway, I only really returned so someone could cut me free. I'm not quite done with that base yet, so if you'll excuse me..."
He turned and went to the small closet where most of his gear had lain untouched in his absence. A new belt would be required. Smoke bombs, explosive tags, contract scrolls, a couple of kunai – he tested their sharpness on his already tattered sleeve and nodded in satisfaction when they sliced the fabric like it was soft butter. Behind him he heard the scrape of a chair as Jiraiya rose to his feet. "Leave this one to us, Minato," he said. "You've done enough."
"By the time you organise a force big enough to take the base and march it up the mountain, they'll have packed up and gone. We have only a few minutes at most." Minato slipped on a pair of gloves to protect his damaged hands and then paused, looking around the room for that one final thing he'd forgotten but he knew he needed more than anything.
He spotted the plate of half-eaten biscuits in the middle of the desk. "Ah." He went over and stuffed most of them in his mouth in one go. After a week of the bare minimum, he was unbelievably hungry. The biscuits would have to do for now until he could get home and park himself before an all-you-can-eat buffet for a few days. Or he could just park himself in front of Kushina and give her the puppy-eyes.
"We should discuss this plan," said the ANBU captain urgently, which was typical of her profession. If a fire broke out in the ANBU headquarters the captains would probably call a conference to decide what to do about it.
"This has been the plan for the best part of the week," Minato told her. "Please do not concern yourselves."
"Minato," Jiraiya sighed helplessly.
Swiping the last of the biscuits, he turned to Gekko. "If you could keep minding that for me just a little bit longer," he said, pointing to the marked kunai dangling from her belt. "I promise I'll aim myself a little more carefully next time."
"Sure thing, Taichou," she said faintly.
To the others he nodded one last time. "I'll be back shortly."
Before they could raise another protest he activated Hiraishin and stepped from the cosy warmth of his crowded cabin back into his dark, cold cell where the air was noticeably thinner. The chakra mark that he'd previously planted against the wall with his foot faded and he looked towards the door that had been left open invitingly wide. He swept through it and into the veins of the base.
The empty corridors were narrow and quiet and every couple of yards Minato ran his hand along the wall like a blind man feeling his way. It was an apt comparison since his probing chakra told him more about the structure of the base than his eyes could. Beyond these thick walls was pure rock and little else. The complex was a small one, more of a bolt-hole than a base, constructed within a mountain and was most likely invisible from the outside. An expedition from the Konoha outpost would hike right past it if they didn't know what they were looking for.
Static interference suddenly crackled through the hollow corridors. Minato was treated to the very unpleasant experience of hearing Kusnagi's disembodied voice screech through the base's intercom system. "Where is G and Akino? We're leaving in five – if you haven't collected the transferrals by then I'm leaving you behind and blowing the base with you in it!"
If everyone was on a first name terms, there could only have been a handful of people occupying the base, which made sense given its small size. He'd made the right decision, he thought, raising a biscuit to his mouth the snap it in half. A clatter of boots echoed down the corridor ahead of him. Evidently someone didn't want to get blown up.
When the first Kumo nin ran around the corner and saw Minato, he braked so hard his companion ran into him from behind. Slack-jawed, he pointed. "It's him! He's right there!"
Minato took two deft steps and grabbed the pointing hand, slamming its owner into the wall and twisting his arm high behind his back until he gave a distinctive whimper. The second Kumo nin didn't hang back, and with one hand employed in restraining the first man and the other holding half a biscuit, there wasn't much he could do about it. He dodged the first punch. The second he deflected with his elbow. Before the increasingly desperate man could aim a third strike, Minato's foot lashed up, catching him in the stomach. A spluttering grunt bounced off the walls, followed by a sound thud as Minato hooked the toes of his sandal behind the man's heel and swept his feet out.
Now with one man on the ground held in place by a foot against his throat and another pinned to the wall, Minato helped himself to the second half of his biscuit. "Where's Kusanagi's quarters, or wherever else is the centre of operations here."
Neither man spoke. The one on the ground tried to reach for a kunai but quite wisely stopped when Minato started to shift more of his weight onto the foot compressing his windpipe. "It's in your interests to talk to me," he warned them. "Either way I'm leaving you both unconscious and if I don't find your boss before he blows up this base, you'll both be charred corpses tomorrow."
"Round the corner, the way we came," said the man on the floor ever so quickly. "Up the stairs and then follow the corridor straight. It's the very end room, you can't miss it."
"G!" growled the man up against the wall, and began to struggle.
Minato looked at him sharply. "Don't move."
Perhaps he thought Minato was bluffing or that he wasn't being restrained so tightly. He continued to resist and tried to jerk his arm free of the lock... and in a small cascade of pops and snaps his elbow and shoulder shattered. His arm simply fell apart.
Minato smothered his scream with his hand and quickly pushed the writhing man to the ground. He reached for their throats, probing a thumb behind their carotid artery to press and massage the hidden pulse point that caused paralysis and hastened unconsciousness. True to his word, he would refrain from killing them; it was a little unsporting to kill them after they'd been so helpful.
After a few more moments, they shuddered and went still. When he was certain they weren't faking he picked himself up and ran off down the path they'd directed him to. He met no one else as he flew up the stairs and on the next floor up he discovered that his informant had been honest. Kusanagi's office really was hard to miss – Minato could see straight down the corridor and through the open door to where the man himself was flitting back and forth in a flurry of activity.
Minato started forward.
In the middle of his hectic rush he saw Kusanagi pause and lean down to speak into something on his desk. His voice echoed all around the corridors. "Where is my equipment! If you idiots don't fetch it up here right now-!"
He must have heard Minato's footsteps, as he suddenly broke off and turned expectantly. But the presumptuous expression lasted only a moment, replaced quickly with a sagging blankness of shock. Shock which quickly began to tighten into fear.
"Not one step closer or I'll activate every tag in this base and bits of us will be raining into the sea for months!" Kusanagi bleated.
Minato didn't pause. His steadiness disconcerted his Kumo captor who was not used to being ignored, and in that vital moment the old man quailed in hesitation. Minato walked right up to him without breaking stride, and in one seamless move had spun him around by his shoulder and dragged a kunai through his throat. It was always a messy method, but quick, and Minato had long ago learned how to direct the blood spray elsewhere. Kusanagi gurgled and began to fall.
Minato had moved on and forgotten him before his body hit the floor.
The desk was his goal. He could see he'd interrupted Kusanagi's attempt to compile the documents he wished to take with him and separate the ones to be left behind and destroyed. An exploding tag had been stuck to the wooden surface between the stacks of files and papers, ready to detonate in just a few minutes. Minato scored it in half with his kunai, deactivating it effectively before he assumed Kusanagi's job... collecting the data that needed to be saved.
He knew what to look for. As commander of his outpost he knew the likely keywords to look for and the places to find them. The most sensitive things were always the most innocuous. Minato picked up a file labelled 'Accounting' and a quick flip through the documents within yielded quite a few accounts, including an account of the positions of similar bases, an account of how many operatives were serving under Kusanagi, and an account of Konoha's weakest defence points along the border.
A heap of correspondence had been set aside in a box, probably to be burned with the remains of the base. Minato rescued the wad of assorted letters, knowing that although every stickler for the rules coded their messages, in the more casual and personal exchanges secrets were often dropped with alarming regularity.
On a cork board behind him he found a map of the base, which was almost certainly a blue-print for similar bases nearby. He took it down, along with the photo of the smiling red-head beside it. He tucked the latter safely back into his vest pocket before he plucked a scroll from his hip and snapped it open.
A rather large toad roughly the side of a Labrador appeared in the middle of the desk in a cloud of smoke. It began to give a croak of greeting before changing its mind. "Whoa – you know us toads explode at high altitudes," it gasped.
"Buck up, Gamakkun, it's not that bad," Minato said dismissively, neglecting to mention it had taken him more than a week to acclimatise enough to the conditions up here to even think about engaging in combat. Even now he was carefully trying to expend as little energy as possible. If he elevated his heart rate any higher than it was already he would undoubtedly faint.
"What is it you need?" Gamakkun asked.
"I need you to open your mouth."
"Wh –why? – whaugh-"
"Sorry about this," he said, jamming his stack of files and papers into the toad's gullet. He felt a little bad about it, but Jiraiya always assured him his summons were remarkably... stretchy. "I need you to take these quickly and securely to Jiraiya-sensei. He'll want to pass them along to the Hokage as soon as possible.
The files disappeared and Minato quickly withdrew his hand from the toad's slimy mouth. Gamakkun licked his wide lips, showing little evidence that anything so unnatural had just taken place. "Can do," he said. "But why can't you take them?"
"I want to stay a little longer and keep looking. In the mean time, get this to Sensei," he said urgently. "It's very important."
"Very important. Don't digest. Gotcha." Gamakkun squatted his front legs slightly, possibly the frog equivalent of a bow, and vanished abruptly.
Minato resumed his search, raiding every cupboard and drawer and alcove he could find. He couldn't let anything escape his notice now. This was a rare chance to raid the office of a very high ranking member of Kumo's force, and Minato had no intention of overlooking anything. If war was truly coming, this was life and death for who knew how many people. He ripped out the desk drawers to look for hidden compartments, poked his fingers into the light fittings in the ceiling, and pulled over the empty filing cabinet in the corner to make sure Kusanagi hadn't hidden anything behind it. Tugging the cork board off the wall seemed the next logical step in his thorough dismantlement of the office, but he was richly rewarded when it revealed the thick door of a safe.
Unfortunately for Minato, it was a safe designed by and for shinobi. A regular safe was easy to crack even without using chakra, but Minato only had to pass his hand over this one to feel the stringent precautions in place. All kinds of seals and wards must have been built into it because Minato's chakra couldn't penetrate it at all. There was no telling what was inside. Had Kusanagi intended to open it or leave it to be destroyed? If Minato had just held back a few more minutes perhaps he wouldn't be here having to figure out how to open it himself.
"Shouldn't have killed him," he sighed to himself, shooting the body on the floor an annoyed glance as if it was Kusanagi's fault for inconveniencing him. "Why do I always end up saying that?"
Minato probed a little chakra into the lock and was soundly rebuffed. Frowning deeply, he began to physically turn the dial, but he already knew it was hopeless. There were millions of combinations to choose from and he didn't have the time or patience to crack the code manually. His hearing certainly wasn't sensitive enough to discern one little click from the next. Someone like Hatake Sakumo, or even Kushina could probably just press their ear to the door, but Minato either had to find the code quickly or open the safe with force – and he neither thought Kusanagi was stupid enough to leave the code for his safe anywhere but inside his own head, nor had 'force' ever been his forte.
He still had to try. Stepping back a little, he lifted his hand and began to draw chakra into his palm and rotate it. It spun faster and tighter until the light of the swirling ball of chakra tinged the room a faint blue. It may not have been finished, but for this purpose, the rasengan might just do.
But when he slammed the whirling energy against the door of the safe, it did little more than scuff the paint work and leave a faint dint before dissipating.
Minato paused, panting a little from the exertion and wondering what to do next. He knew he couldn't expend much more energy... just using rasengan made him feel faint and light-headed.
"You!" he heard a terrific below from the corridor behind him. "Stop right there!"
He turned. Someone was barrelling down the corridor towards the office like a bull charging for a red flag. It looked like A had finally caught up to him.
As quick as the flash he was named for, Minato hopped over the desk and reached for the heavy door. Kicking Kusanagi's arm out the way, he slammed it shut and bolted it, but not before he threw a handful of smoke bombs into the corridor. The noxious gas would fill the airspace and slow A down, at least for a minute or two. Minato just needed those few extra minutes.
Since he didn't have much left to loose, Minato went for the crude method. He overturned Kusanagi's desk chair and cut off one of its metal legs with a chakra-charged kunai. The tapered tip was just narrow enough to slide between the safe's door and its frame, and if he could just push hard enough he might-
The office door exploded inwards. Minato ducked instinctively, only narrowly avoiding being turned into a smear against the wall as the door, knocked right off its sturdy hinges, ripped through the desk and ended its violent flight scant inches away from where he'd been standing. Minato felt like someone had dropped a bucket of loose nuts and bolts into his brain. His nerves jangled as he stared at the shattered desk and the smoke pouring in through the hole where the door used to be, and the huge man stepping inside without a hair out of place.
A looked down at Kusanagi's body and merely grunted. "Figures," he drawled, shifting his hooded gaze to Minato. "I don't doubt turnabout is fair play after what we did to you. Tried to do. But it ends here. Go now or you'll be joining Kusanagi."
Minato's back was pressed quite hard to the wall like he was unconsciously trying to sink through it. A was giving him a free pass to leave because he knew there was no realistic way he could stop Minato using Hiraishin again, and frankly it was very tempting to take that advice. Seeing him punch through that door did things to one's stomach... and it did not leave him eager to see what his punches could do to a human body.
But a terrible, dangerous idea had just popped into Minato's head, and he could not shake it free...
"Your boss went down a little easy," he said to A. "Is someone like him really your superior?"
"Head of the Intelligence Division," A grunted flatly. "All brains and no brawn, that lot. In his case, he's a politician, so no brains either."
"Maybe I just did you a favour then."
"No, you just gave me a shit load of paperwork. Not to mention I was looking forward to the day I could start making him squirm when I became his superior." A lifted his enormous fists and began to crack his knuckles.
Minato remained rooted to the spot. "Oh, that's right," he said, seizing on this opening. "You're going to be Raikage one day, aren't you? Is that because you're the strongest in your village, or because of your brother?"
A went still, eyes narrowing sharply on him. "Excuse me?"
"I hear that in your village the Raikage is chosen because of his relation to the eight-tailed monster. That's your brother, right? If they have to select the Raikage from his pool of relatives, I'm guessing you're his only family."
"Pretty much," said A, eyeing Minato like pesky fly he was debating whether or not to swat.
He needed more pushing. "Or is it the other way around?" Minato continued. "Is the host of the eight-tails chosen because of his relation to you? Being the reason your brother is turned into a monster has to suck. How long do you think this one will last out? The previous host only lasted six months, right? And the one before that was less than three weeks? How long before your little brother goes berserk and kills everyone and leaves you to pick up the pieces? I suppose it doesn't matter... you must have spare little brothers, right?"
A surged forward, fist raised and face set. Either Minato had enraged him to the point of seeing red, or he was just bored listening to him ramble, but the effort had paid off. Minato threw himself to the side a split second before A's charged fist smashed against the wall where he'd been standing. Concrete cracked and exploded out, filling the room with a cloud of dust to add to the gas from the smoke bombs.
Something else beside concrete skidded across the floor beside Minato; he looked up and saw the dial from the safe skudding through the remains of the desk. Triumphantly he rolled upright and looked back at the hole A had made. The corner of the wall safe had taken the brunt of the blow, its door was missing, as was a large part of its frame and the concrete wall beside it, and now heavy Kumo coins were trickling out onto the floor like a waterfall of money. Even A was momentarily bemused, looking down in confusion at the coins collecting at his feet.
Minato was not interested in Kusanagi's personal or professional wealth. His eyes had landed on a thin manila envelope that teetered on the lip of the safe, about to slip onto the floor. Quickly, before A could regroup himself, Minato shot forward, dashing between A and the safe and snatching the envelope as he passed.
He was brought to a screeching halt when one of A's impossibly strong hands caught his hair. The other seized his wrist, holding it immobile in a crushing grip that almost caused Minato to drop his prize. Mouth open in a silent cry of pain, Minato held himself very still.
"By all accounts you'll be the next Hokage yourself, Namikaze Minato," said A, restraining him effortlessly. "So let me give you a piece of advice."
He pulled Minato's head closer to his so that Minato couldn't miss a nuance of the contempt and anger that twisted in A's face. "As long as you cling to the old bigotry and prejudices, the day you become Hokage is going to be the beginning of a dark era for Konoha. If someone like you is the best Konoha can offer, there'll never be peace between us, and if we-"
"You're ones to talk about peace!"
Raising his chakra up to the surface, it lashed around his skin in its purest elemental form. And when concentrated enough, wind could cut like fine razor blades. Little snicks and snips plucked at Minato's clothes, ripping and tearing them. Great chunks of his own hair rained down around his shoulders. Most importantly, A lost his purchase and wheeled away, fingers bleeding.
At once Minato formed a new series of seals and pushed his hand towards the enormous man. A blast of air rocked the room. Whatever had been tenaciously clinging to the walls so far finally fell away, joining the pieces of the desk and loose coins that rose from the floor and shot with hurricane force straight for A.
Battered by the onslaught, the big man stumbled back into the far wall, lifting his arms to protect his face.
Kushina's techniques came in awfully handy sometimes, but Minato couldn't keep it up. The air was already too thin, his heart was hammering like an overly tight drum in his chest, and he dropped the jutsu as a wave of profound weakness swept over him.
When the shrapnel fell away, A brushed the chips of wood from his shoulders with his bleeding hands like they were bits of lint. "You're out of your element here," he remarked.
"How can you lecture about peace to me," Minato gasped out, ignoring him, "when your village is planning to wage war on us over a misunderstanding? When you inflict constant turmoil and violence on yourselves because of your pursuit of bijuu? You don't have the right to talk about peace!"
"Bijuu are the path to absolute power and absolute peace," said A, "or have you forgotten how the founding father of your village used them?"
"He never implanted them into anyone!" Minato bristled. "That kind of cruelty is unforgiveable!"
"It's true my brother Bee will always suffer cruelty and hardship... but not because of any bijuu." A's glare was low and dark. "His suffering will always be at the hands of people like you."
"And all the jinchuuriki before him who were driven mad and forced to become instruments of slaughter by their own insanity? What about them?" Minato demanded coldly. "Or are we supposed to forget about them?"
"Acceptable collateral," said A.
"Along with all their victims, no doubt." Minato shook his head in disbelief.
A snapped some of the congealing blood from his hands and rolled his shoulders. "It seems we won't agree on this," he said, "and you've had your run of this base long enough."
And he attacked.
It was easy to look at someone as large and physically powerful as A and assume he would be a similar opponent to Jiraiya; rocklike and immoveable, hard to injure but slow in movement. So it was easy to be taken aback when Minato could barely stay ahead of him. A's body took on a charged hue, encased by an aura of chakra, and when he punched Minato ducked, but only just. When he picked up one of the desk drawers to smash it over Minato's head, he threw himself to the floor, but barely in time. And when A lifted a foot to stomp him through the concrete floor, Minato rolled away, but only with scant millimetres to spare.
Smoke bombs slipped from his pouch and cracked open, engulfing Minato in a cloud of grey. His spare hand groped for something – anything – to throw and landed on a chip of plaster. It would do. No sooner had he touched it than he marked it, then threw it as true as an arrow at A's head.
A saw it coming, of course. Even from the cover of a smoke screen his reactions were fast enough to avoid sharp little projectiles. He inclined his head and let the piece of plaster slip harmlessly past his ear to rebound against the ceiling. His mistake in ignoring it registered just one fraction too late for A, and gratingly early for Minato. A began to turn...
Minato landed on his back, and the kunai he'd been aiming for A's neck sunk into the slab of muscle that was A's shoulder and no further. It might have been devastating for anyone else, but for a man this size it was nothing more than a flesh wound. Minato sprang back, attempting to gain distance as A lashed out. One heavy fist connected with Minato's ribs and knocked him flying into the severely beaten filing cabinet.
"I think we've had our fun now," A said, walking over to Minato's stunned form as if he couldn't even feel the kunai sticking out of his shoulder. "It's time for our goodbyes."
He charged his fist one last time and struck... and it was not Minato he aimed for, but the wall beside him. The support gave out and the plaster cracked. Minato had time enough to register the crushing concrete blocks falling on him before his body reacted instinctively.
By the time his mind caught up he was lying in the middle of the outer quad of his outpost, being peered at by a curious Gekko and a platoon of chunin.
"Taichou?" Gekko, who was perhaps beginning to grow accustomed to his sudden appearances, snapped to attention. "You're back, sir!"
Patting himself down to make sure he definitely hadn't been crushed, Minato sat up slowly and probed for the tagged kunai he'd left in A's shoulder. He detected it for only a brief moment before it was snuffed out like a distant light in the darkness and he felt no more. A had destroyed it. By collapsing the wall he'd forced Minato to activate Hiraishin to escape and then had promptly destroyed Minato's only means of getting back.
But it hadn't been a total loss, he thought, looking down at the badly scuffed and bent envelope in his hand.
"Taichou, what happened?" Gekko asked, reaching down to help him up "You look as bad as I feel!"
Yes, his clothes were a little worse for wear and he had inadvertently chopped most of his hair off, but it had to be said that these were mostly self-inflicted. The bruised ribs and loose tooth, however, were A's handiwork. "I'm fine," he said, which was mostly true. "What's going on?" he asked, looking at the team of chunin.
"That ANBU woman is organising a team to locate the base," Gekko told him. "She says-"
"Forget it," he said, approaching the chunin with a raised voice. "Field trip cancelled. You can all disarm and go back to your barracks."
This was met with groans of disappointment, but obediently they began to disperse. Almost at once the door to his cabin opened and people streamed out. Jiraiya, Sakumo, and Yuuhi, headed by the ANBU captain. "What's the meaning of this?" she asked, sounding more curious than anything.
"An expedition to the base is out of the question," Minato told her. "There's a man called A up there... and the chunin of this base aren't equipped to deal with him or the conditions. It's best we leave it for now. Besides, I've already dealt with the man responsible and recovered as much intelligence as I could."
"I got the papers you sent with Gamakkun," Jiraiya told him. "They should be with the Hokage by now."
"I got this too," Minato said, holding up the manila envelope.
"What is it?" the captain asked.
"I don't know. The man in charge there was keeping it in his safe, so I figured it had to be important," If it turned out to be the first chapter draft of Kusanagi's pompous autobiography, Minato was going to be very annoyed.
The captain accepted the envelope and handed it off to Sakumo. "I see," she said. "Thank you for your hard work tonight. But may I suggest you take some rest now? You look like you need it."
Minato nodded gratefully, suddenly feeling exactly as tired as he should have been feeling hours ago. Jiraiya's arm slung around his shoulder in the guise of camaraderie, with a blithe comment of "Nice haircut, kid," though he knew his sensei was holding him up and steering him towards the cabin before he dropped in an embarrassing heap in the middle of the quad.
"Sensei," he began wearily as they entered into the quiet office that connected to his private room. "I think I may have missed the festival."
"Yes, I think you did," Jiraiya said cheerfully.
"How annoyed was Kushina?"
"Very," he reassured him. "But she was quite relieved to hear you'd been kidnapped."
"What."
"Yes, a girl is much happier when the reason her boy stood her up is because he is being held captive by ruthless enemy nin than because he couldn't be bothered making time for her."
"Well, at least she's happy."
"Oh, no, Minato, she's been quite upset. It's one thing to think your boyfriend stood you up, but to learn he's actually being held captive by ruthless enemy-nin? Hoo, boy."
"... I don't get it."
"Women, Minato." Jiraiya shook his head as if this explained everything. "Women."
It sort of did.
"I suppose I did let myself get captured on purpose," Minato sighed. Jiraiya had escorted him into his room and had directed him to slump on the bed. "I should try to make it up to her."
"You'll have plenty of time for that," said Jiraiya, patting him on the head like he was still a ten year boy as opposed to a twenty-one year old man. "You'll be coming back to Konoha with us when we leave to report to the Hokage. He'll be willing to let you retire a little early from this post in light of everything that's happened."
"That's nice," Minato yawned. "As long as we go by boat."
"I don't think it makes much difference time-wise... but why by boat?"
"There's something I need to pick up."
Two days later, Konoha's Yellow Flash was safely restored to his village, though word that he'd single-handedly destroyed yet another base had made the rounds long before he arrived through the gates. His reputation, he felt, was going to start exerting its own gravitational force at the rate it was growing.
It had been difficult parting ways with the outpost he'd called home for the last two years. Gekko had teared up, claiming allergies, and Yuuhi had gone on about it being an honour and a privilege as if Minato was dying instead of simply going home. His chunin subordinates had thrown an impromptu party in his honour the night before he left, and were not content until it seemed each and every one had bought him a beer. Whether this was out of affection for him or out of malicious retribution for all those drills he'd made them do in the sleet and snow, Minato wasn't sure. He had a thumping headache most of the way to Konoha.
Hatake Sakumo insisted it was quite urgent that they make their way directly to the Hokage when they got back. Minato would have preferred to slink home and find Kushina, but he understood that Sakumo had seen something in those documents from Kusanagi's safe that had put him in an unusually dark mood. It seemed a little unnecessary, however. Sakumo and Jiraiya went to consult with the Hokage in privacy, leaving Minato in the waiting room to consult with boredom – they hadn't decided yet if Minato was cleared to be included in the discussion of the information he himself had found.
One of the Hokage's aides brought him a glass of cool juice while he was waiting and all but melted when treated to his grateful smile. He had settled down to stretch out and examine his toes when the sound of raised voices drifted through the door to the corridor.
"-you know me, you see me here all the time, what's the problem?"
"The Hokage's in a meeting and he's not to be disturbed."
"It's not the Hokage I want to disturb!"
"It's the rules. No one's permitted-"
"Let me tell you where you can go stuff those rules-!"
Minato bounded across the waiting room and threw open the door. "Kushina!"
She had just started to bodily grapple with the guard outside, but the moment she saw him her face lit up like a child presented with her favourite toy. "Minato, I'm so glad you're – would you let me go?"
"It's ok," he said to the guard who had his arms wrapped around her. "Let her in."
She ducked beneath the guards slack arms and into the waiting room before he could change his mind. "I've been so worried – everyone said you were back – I'm so relieved – I was beginning to think I'd never see you again – I knew you'd be ok though – oh no, your poor face! Your horrible hair! What happened?"
Although the bruise A had given him had healed significantly, he'd still been left with an impressive mottling of yellow and purple across his cheek and jaw. Kushina lifted her hand as if to trace the injury, but her fingers didn't quite dare to touch his skin. "I'm ok," he told her. "It looks worse than it is."
"I can't believe this happened because of me," she sighed angrily. "Isn't it normally the little woman that gets kidnapped to get to the hero? What the hell, Minato? You got it the wrong way round, as usual."
"You did warn me they'd come for you to get to your father's techniques."
She chewed her lip guiltily. "The Hokage suspected they were after me for my... condition. I wanted to give myself up but he wouldn't let me."
"Good."
"Good? For them maybe. I totally would have kicked their asses for hurting you. Nobody messes up my boyfriend's face and lives."
"I was never in any real danger," he reassured her, stroking a lock of crimson hair back behind her ear. "I'm just sorry I missed the festival."
"Oh, whatever." She shook her head exuberantly, dislodging her hair again. "Better to have you back late than never."
"I still felt bad... so I got you a present."
Her eyes narrowed and her mouth dropped open a fraction. "Seriously?"
"Seriously."
"You're a serious lunatic, you know that?" she snorted in a very unladylike manner. "Only you would spend a week in a Kumo prison and come back with souvenirs."
"Well, not quite. Do you want your present or not?"
A shy grin spread across her face and she wrinkled her nose adorably. "Seriously?"
He wasn't starting that again. Taking her hand, he dragged her over to the chair where he'd left his travelling pack. Kushina peered curiously around him as he slipped open a side-pocket and withdrew a bulging paper bag. "It was quite tricky getting hold of these," he told her as he stripped the outer paper away and placed the inner, plastic bag filled with water into her hands. "Since I didn't get the chance to win you any goldfish, these will have to do."
"But these are..." Kushina trailed off, staring at the bag in her hands. Within it swam three little red fish with fins like billowing sails. "These are my fish. I've only ever seen them in... don't tell me you went to Whirlpool!"
"If you go by boat, it's not far out of the way," he said. "I remembered you saying how you used to catch them when you were younger so... here you are."
"How could you have remembered something like that?" She gaped at him. "That was years ago!"
"I always seem to remember the things you say."
"But I say a lot of crap!"
"Yes, I know." He smiled and tucked that obstinate lock of hair aside again. "Do you like them?"
"Ohmygod, yes!" she blurted happily. "I'm going to buy an aquarium and then some rocks and –they prefer salt water if I remember right- and I'll get them some plants, and this one's going to be called Fugu-face because he looks like a horrible little brute-"
"I'm glad you like them," he interrupted. "I risked life and limb getting them, you know. I had to beat off a shark at one point."
"There aren't any sharks around Whirlpool," she reminded him briskly.
"Then it was probably some kind of enormous salt water crocodile. It even bit me."
She gasped. "Where?"
He rolled up his sleeve to show her his arm "Right there," he pointed.
She looked closely. "I don't see anything."
"Look right there, next to that freckle." When she only scrutinised his skin even more hopelessly, he sighed and pulled his sleeve down again. "Ok. It looked worse before."
Kushina looked up at him again with a wry smile. "You're so brave," she told him, without any kind of conceit, and moved forward on tiptoes to hug him. "And so thoughtful and stupid and –urgh- so thin! When did you get so bony?"
He thought. "Probably around the time some Kumo nin put me on a starvation diet."
She looked horrified. "You need to go home and eat!" she ordered, as the door to the Hokage's office opened up behind them. "You're going to slip between the cracks in the floorboards if you're not careful."
"Leave him alone, Kushina," said Sakumo from the doorway. "He's healthy enough-"
She whirled on him. "You may be fine with being a skinny rake, Sensei, but don't you start being a bad influence on Minato."
He nodded. "Yes, yes. Minato, could you step inside now?"
Minato looked at Kushina who shrugged. "I'll head home," she told him. "Be back by six and I'll make dinner. All your favourite things."
Not a herd of stampeding elephants or even more Kumo nin could possibly stop him. He told her so and she smiled, and leant up to press a quick kiss to his cheek, mindful of the fact that her sensei was standing there boring holes into the side of Minato's head with his eyes. She took her fish and absconded; Minato turned to Sakumo in satisfaction.
"You've failed the first rule of giving women gifts," Sakumo told him seriously. "Never give a girl something she'll prize more than you."
Minato refused to be psyched. "I doubt if those fish got kidnapped by Kumo she'd consider trading herself in for their release," he retorted as he moved past him into the office.
"Don't bet on it," said Sakumo warned sinisterly.
"He's right," said Jiraiya, who was occupying one of two chairs before the Hokage's desk. His feet were occupying the other. "When you told me you were going to get Kushina's childhood fish I knew you were doomed. She's going to go home and sweep all your pictures off the sideboard to make space for their tank. That's your problem, Minato. You're too damn thoughtful."
"It's painful to watch," Sakumo said.
"Excruciating," added Jiraiya. "Isn't that right, Sensei?"
"Quite," agreed the Hokage, although he didn't appear to be paying attention. His gaze was focused on the set of papers before him, which he looked up from reluctantly to gesture to Minato. "Take a seat, please."
Jiraiya obligingly removed his feet, allowing Minato to slide onto the chair while Sakumo stood vigil behind them.
"I suppose the first and most pressing question is, are these documents genuine?" the Hokage began. "You said you found these in a safe in the base. In the office of one Umage Kusanagi?"
"That's right," nodded Minato. "I can't tell you if they're genuine or not, only how I found them."
So he repeated his story to the Hokage, about his rash decision to allow his capture in order to gather intelligence and all the events in between till the moment he'd returned to his outpost with those papers in hand.
"You say this 'A' suspected you had purposefully allowed your capture?" The Hokage said, running fingers over dry lips. "He must have suspected you were trying to mine information, so is there any chance he planted these for you to find?"
"I'm not sure," Minato admitted. The thought hadn't occurred to him. "It was Kusanagi's office and Kusanagi's safe... although A did technically open the safe for me, he did seem surprised by the fact. And I'm almost certain none of them expected me to return when I did, so I'm not sure they would have had time to prepare false information. Kusanagi definitely didn't see me coming. A literally caught me when I had those documents in my hand but he didn't try to recover them, so whether that means he wanted me to take them or he didn't know or care what they were...? Hokage-sama, I don't know."
The Hokage grunted. "As far as intelligence officials go, Kusanagi was not the most brilliant. If he was responsible for anticipating the intelligence leak and mocking this up, it's a real piece of work. Especially since it goes a long way to explaining the puzzling findings of our own intelligence officials. Such as why have Kumo troops been seen moving freely in the Iwa occupied regions of the Waterfall country? Why, when Iwa is accusing every village on the continent of infractions against them, are they sparing Kumo alone of any criticism? And why, when our sources report that Kumo nin captured the five-tailed bijuu six months ago, they have made no attempt whatsoever to implant it into one of their citizens despite their zealous history of doing just that at the first opportunity?"
Minato shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "And what do the documents say?"
The Hokage passed the papers to Minato and gestured for him to read as he gave a brief overview. "These documents are correspondence from the Raikage to Kusanagi, the latter of whom was apparently spearheading several operations. One of which was to screen potential hosts for their two-tailed bijuu. The other, to screen hosts for a five-tailed bijuu."
"Yes, he mentioned he wanted Kushina because her chakra supposedly made her an ideal host or something," Minato murmured. "But I don't understand what is so unusual about that."
"Kusanagi drew up a list of candidates to be the host of the five-tailed bijuu. We don't have the full list, but the Raikage shortlisted them and their names are on the next page if you'd like to turn to it. Yes. Do you notice anything unusual about those names?"
There were about twelve names in total, and at first glance he saw nothing strange about them whatsoever. By the tenth name, however, it began to dawn on Minato what was so odd. "These aren't traditional Kumo names," he said suddenly. "And I know this guy – he's in the bingo book. He's from Iwa."
"Yes, they're screening Iwa nin for hosts. Apparently with their consent."
"They're giving a bijuu to Iwa?" Minato skimmed hurriedly through the rest of the correspondence. "A peace offering? Or a-"
"A pact," Sakumo finished for him gravely. "Iwa and Kumo are affirming their sudden and rather inexplicable bond of friendship over a commonality."
"Their commonality being their shared hatred of Konoha," Jiraiya interjected. "Kumo wants to wage war against us and they're wooing Iwa to join them with gifts of bijuu, not that Iwa needs much convincing. And under the combined might of Iwa and Kumo together, things begin to look grim for little old us in the middle."
"Not if we interfere," said Sakumo. "With this information, we have a very narrow advantage. Iwa will be sending their chosen host to Kumo for implantation, and if all goes according to plan, they both go home happy. But if something were to go horribly awry, like say... the host is killed in Kumo before implantation, or the bijuu is released or stolen, Iwa and Kumo won't be so friendly anymore. This could be a prime opportunity to betray their trust in one another and set them at each other's throats."
"It's ambitious, but I see no alternative," sighed the Hokage, leaned back in his chair and turning slightly to regard rooftops of his village through the window. "According to the other documents you recovered, Kumo plans to initiate an invasion soon. We could hold them at bay well enough normally, but if they coordinate an invasion with Iwa who is already close to matching us in strength and size, we might not be able to hold two fronts."
"What about this business with the abductions?" Minato asked suddenly. "Kumo says their people are going missing and they blame us. If we can resolve it-"
"What is there to resolve?" The Hokage demanded, tiredness and irritation pulling at his features. Given how much grief Minato had been given by the Kumo emissary over this subject and learning that the Hokage was facing such accusations from all sides, he realised this was a well-beaten topic for the old man. "We're not responsible and I can say it till I'm blue in the face. They want war and they will cling to whatever reason they can think of."
"Are all the accusations baseless?" Minato asked, knowing the other three man were now acutely focused on him. And not in a good way. "They seem to really believe their people are going missing, as do other villages. Even if they're pointing the finger at the wrong people, is it that hard to believe they're all lying? After all, we had the same problem. Shinobi going missing, newborns stolen, with the victims suspected of being experimented on. It sounds too familiar. We thought we resolved the problem when it was ours but what if we didn't?"
The Hokage shook his head firmly. "Minato, we caught the man responsible. He committed suicide rather than face capture. It's no coincidence the abductions ceased after that-"
"Except they've only ceased here, just round about the same time they started elsewhere."
"Orochimaru conducted the investigation himself-" The Hokage began.
"It's not like precious Oro-kun is infallible," Jiraiya interrupted. "If whoever is taking these people can fool multiple villages into blaming the wrong people, he can certainly fool even Orochimaru."
The Hokage was not pleased, and his finger drummed the arm of his chair restlessly as he scowled at the documents upon his desk. "Even if we were to do what we could not do five years ago and bring this criminal to justice, what then? Do you really think the other villages will lay down their arms and thank us? Abductions are not their reason, it is their excuse. We can give them the man or men responsible, and they will only respond that they are our scapegoats. It doesn't matter what we do, and we can't devote resources to capturing this entity when we face an unprecedented alliance between two extremely powerful enemy states. Meagre placatory actions now is like slapping a bandaid on a severed limb!"
"Too much of a bother, you mean," Minato suggested mildly. "Because who cares if people are being kidnapped and slaughtered as long as they're not our people."
Jiraiya kicked him discreetly.
"Should you ever become Hokage, Minato, and god help us all if that happens," the third Hokage said sharply, "let us pray you are never faced with the choice to save a handful of the enemy at the cost of the lives of countless of our own. Now please let us move on from this unpleasant subject before I lose my temper."
Minato suspected he may have already lost it, but dutifully sat back and sealed his lips for the rest of the meeting. It was agreed eventually that Sakumo would lead the mission to intercept the bijuu exchange between Kumo and Iwa, either to assassinate the Iwa host or wreak some pandemonium with the bijuu itself, whichever opportunity struck first. It sounded like a singularly difficult mission that would involve infiltrating the heart of Kumo undetected when it was at its highest alert. Minato offered to assist and was shot down in no uncertain terms. Jiraiya said he needed to rest, while Sakumo dryly remarked that their joint missions to other villages never ended well. The Hokage just eyed him like he was looking at a dirty hippy.
"Oh, I'm sure he'll get over it," said Kushina later. "That's how he looks at me all the time."
"Is that because you always argue with him or because you broke his nephew's heart?" Minato asked.
"Hum," she grunted as she checked the salt levels in her new fish tank. "Not sure about that. Maybe he just doesn't like you criticising his best student? Speaking of that weirdo, you know he's mentoring a little girl now? I've seen them together in town sometimes. I'm surprised they let someone like that even near children. Creeps me the hell out."
Once she was satisfied that the tank water was perfectly balanced, she turned away from it, leaving her new fishy friends floating in the bag on top. She smiled at him with her hands behind her back. "Why don't you go wash and get changed and I'll make you dinner. What would you like?"
"Anything. Whatever you make, I like." Kushina could make even reheated noodles taste divine.
"That makes it easy," she said, beaming sweetly at him.
Upstairs, Minato washed the built-up grime from his skin and hair and checked his bruises in the mirror. They weren't very dashing – not even in the badboy sense. His face just looked discoloured and ever so slightly lopsided while the marks on his hands and arms from his bindings still looked like he'd tangled with an angry jellyfish. The ANBU medic captain had offered to heal them completely, but Minato had refused. He planned to show them off later to Kushina who was always very sympathetic to even his most minor injuries and might even offer to kiss them better.
His hair was another matter. Yuuhi had done his best with a pair of scissors to even out the catastrophe Minato had wrought, but it had to be said that Yuuhi was not a master stylist, and Minato had not left much for him to work with. Still, there wasn't much Kushina's strawberry scented hair gel couldn't tame.
Sufficiently groomed, he went and dressed in his familiar old clothes which were indeed a little looser than he remembered. And as he pulled on his favourite lavender shirt he kept glancing over at his bed. He couldn't help noticing it had been completely stripped of its sheets and covers, and piled high with boxes full of assorted junk.
That was a pain. He'd been hoping to just crawl into it later without having to make it first.
In the kitchen Kushina was poking a wooden spoon into a bubbling pot that was just beginning to give off the first whiffs of Deliciousness. Minato sat down with at the table with an appreciative sigh and thought he ought to get kidnapped more often. He could get used to this kind of treatment.
"I hope you like ramen," she said. When she glanced over and witnessed the dopy smile on his face she shook her head in amused confusion. "What?"
"I've not seen you in a while," he explained. "I'm just enjoying the view."
"Pervert," she grunted.
Well, he hadn't quite meant it like that. He began a ham-fisted apology, insisting he hadn't been staring at her ass, but Kushina snorted at this and came to sit with him. "It's not like I'd mind if you were," she said without looking him in the eye, and reached across the table to pull his hand over to her.
She examined it closely, tracing the marks of the binding and the blue veins on his inner wrist that seemed especially stark against his skin after long days without a drop of sunlight. Her thumb followed the lines inside his palm to the tip of his fingers to explore his blunt nails, the swell of his knuckles, and the tiny hairs that tickled under her touch. She was focused, unusually so, and throughout the subtle intimacy he didn't take his eyes off her face.
And he hated to interrupt her, but eventually he had to point it out. "The pot's boiling over."
"Hm? Wh – oh!" She jumped up and lowered the temperature gauge, then stood looking at it irritably as if she could somehow shame it into feeling guilty.
It was hard to imagine how anyone could have thought she was a jinchuuriki. She may have been odd but he was willing to put her within the spectrum of what would be considered normal for someone who had grown up borderline feral. Anyone who had seen a real jinchuuriki would realise how ridiculous the notion was. The one he'd seen in Suna had been more animal than man, immobilised for his safety and the safety of the village, locked in a prison of his own body. The only sign of life had been the odd revolting quiver which had seemed more like the random firing of faulty synapses than conscious will.
He looked at Kushina collecting two bowls from the cupboard and the difference to him was like night and day. How could Kusanagi, who at the very least had come across the right-tailed jinchuuriki, make that kind of mistake?
However, he'd raised other questions that Minato himself had never fully understood.
"Whirlpool's a pretty interesting place." he began, wondering a little too late if this was the wisest time to pursue the subject. "But while I was over there getting your fish, something struck me as a little odd."
"What did?" she asked absently.
"I know there was a civil war and everything, but Whirlpool is in complete ruin," he said. "I've seen towns and even cities torn up by war but never like that, not unless there was some kind of massive bombing campaign that goes way beyond anything I've ever heard of."
"The reformists were not your average warmongers," she said distractedly, shooting him a confused glance. "What are you getting at?"
"There was a natural disaster that hit your island before the war, wasn't there? That's what caused most of the damage, right?"
The wooden spoon that had been stirring the noodles paused, but only for a split second. Kushina turned away, her shoulders hitched just a little higher than before. "Yeah, so?"
"What was it exactly?"
She shrugged sharply. "How should I know? I don't remember. I was like six when it happened. All I remember are the reformists." Then, oddly, she suddenly decided to remember. "It was an earthquake. I think."
Minato had never seen her looking as cagey and evasive as she did now. Her words came in jerky sentences like for some reason he'd suddenly managed to annoy her.
"Kusanagi – the guy who caught me – he seemed to think the Kyuubi attacked the island."
"Well, that's just silly." Kushina furiously banged her spoon against the edge of the pot, before slapping it down on the counter. "Whoever heard of such a stupid thing? The Kyuubi's not attacked anything in, like, seventy years."
Minato's hands flattened on the table. "Is that thing even real?"
"Well, yeah," she looked back at him uncertainly. "Isn't it?"
"I know there are other bijuu," he said. "Our founder is the only man in history who ever had dominion over all of them, and last I checked that was eight. The Kyuubi can't be real. I mean, the strength of the other bijuu is incredible, but the Kyuubi is on a whole other level. A totally malevolent spirit that can wipe mountain ranges off the map in a second – the world couldn't contain that kind of power... how could it exist? It's like the sixth sense, or the fourth dimension. People like to speculate but the ninth bijuu is nothing more than a myth."
"You don't think there could be more than eight?" she asked.
"If there's nine bijuu, why not ten? Why not eleven?" He shook his head. "If the Shodai couldn't control it, I doubt it exists."
"If you're so sure it doesn't exist, why bring it up?" Kushina turned contemplatively back to her cooking.
"Because if it wasn't the Kyuubi that destroyed your village, what was it?"
"I told you I don't remember," she said impatiently.
"The history books don't seem to remember either. You'd think the disaster that killed the second leader would be a noteworthy event, but I don't remember a single mention; not even a footnote. Are you sure you don't remember?"
"I was six," she repeated.
Minato sat back in his chair, unsatisfied but he could see the clear signs that Kushina was closing up on him like an obstinate little clam. When she didn't want to talk about something, pushing her could make her sulk for days, and he didn't want to fall out so soon after returning home.
In silence, Kushina poured her noodle broth into two bowls and set one of them before him. Gaze turned down, she handed him a pair of chopsticks then got to work slurping down her own portion. She paused long enough to look critically at his thin wrists that remained resting on the table. "Eat," she said. "Or I'll force-feed you."
"That would be interesting," he retorted cheekily, lifting a slice of radish to his lips.
They ate quietly for a while. Kushina gradually slowed down, cooling off enough to start savouring her meal. When she suddenly stopped, Minato looked up to see what was wrong. Kushina would never leave a bowl of ramen half-eaten.
"I genuinely don't remember," she told him, more easily than before though she still refused to meet his eyes. "The earth was shaking and there was panic and my mother made me hide under the stairs. Then my father came... I don't remember anything else. I doubt anyone else who survived saw much either, but if it was the Kyuubi...?"
She looked up at him, and he saw her eyes were an unusually dark blue tonight. "If it was the Kyuubi," she went on, "my village wouldn't have advertised it. It's said the Kyuubi only appears where humanity is rotting. Malevolence attracts malevolence. If the Kyuubi comes for you, it's not something to be proud of, and maybe there is something in that? We fought ourselves into virtual extinction within three years, so maybe there was something rotten in us after all."
"Do you really think that's what happened?" he asked her, watching her closely as she poked her noodles unenthusiastically.
"Why is it important?" she shot back. "This 'Kusanagi' guy sounds like he had some screws loose. That ransom note he sent? Kept referring to me as a freaking 'jewel'. If you hadn't killed him I would have asked for a restraining order just to be sure."
"Yeah, he had some pretty weird ideas," Minato agreed. "Get this - he even had it in his head that you were the nine-tailed jinchuuriki."
Kushina stared at him.
"I know, right?" He lifted his bowl and drained the rest of his broth.
"And... what did you say to this?" she asked, voice oddly thin.
"That it was ridiculous, of course. You'd think I'd notice if my own girlfriend was a jinchuuriki. He saw how stupid it was eventually, but then he decided he wanted you anyway so he could implant you with the two-tailed bijuu. I told him he'd have to do it over my dead body. I'd sooner die than let them turn you into one of those things."
Kushina swallowed visibly. "That's sweet of you," she said, standing abruptly to whisk both their bowls over to the sink despite still not yet having finished her portion. Perhaps hearing of Kusanagi's strange plans for her had spooked her because she immediately changed the subject. "Well, I don't know what you're doing but I need to go out and run some errands."
"Right now?" he asked in confusion, glancing at his watch. It was a little late to run errands unless they were the kind of errands so nefarious they required the cover of darkness.
"Yes," she said with a stiffness that implied uncertainty. "Although I guess you'll be going to bed. All that travelling must have worn you out."
"I suppose, but before you go can you help me make it?" he beseeched. "Since you stripped it and covered it with boxes and all…"
Kushina suddenly swore and slapped a hand to her forehead – something he didn't think he'd ever seen anyone do in reality except Kushina. "I'm sorry! Of course, yes, I'll help you."
"What's that about anyway?" he asked her cheerfully. "When you wrote that you were turning my bedroom into a storage room I thought you were joking."
"I was, yes," she said distractedly, moving past him and out the door to climb the stairs. "I was actually trying to make your room unliveable with my crap before you came back for the festival."
Minato scrambled to the bottom of the stairs. "Why? Were you trying to kick me out?"
"Of your room, yes." She hesitated on the upstairs landing and braced her hands on the banister, looking down at him without actually looking directly at him. "I guess it was my stupid way of offering you my bed."
How confusing. Minato frowned. "Your bed? But then where would you sleep?"
After a long beat of silence Kushina's eyes rose to the ceiling and she shook her head in defeat. She moved on to his room to begin pulling the junk off his mattress.
Downstairs, the penny dropped. Minato, realising her true meaning, flew up the stairs faster than he had moved at any point during his fight with A. He stopped in the doorway of his own room and promptly began stammering like an idiot. "That's fine! Your bed – I'll take it – sharing stuff is good for the environment, right – don't bother moving your crap it looks good there!"
"Don't put a brave face on, Minato," Kushina said, kicking a box of old birthday cards across the floor. "I know you're tired and all bashed up. You don't want to share right now with someone who snores and steals the covers. I can wait."
Minato was really beginning to regret stopping the medic from healing his injuries. "I'm not that tired," he insisted. "And I like your snoring."
Kushina ignored him. "There," she said, clearing away the last box and dumping a load of folded sheets on the mattress. "You can manage the rest, can't you? I really have to go do my errands now."
"Now?" he repeated, even more incredulously than before. "Right now?"
"Yes." She tried to move past him, but Minato caught her by the wrist and pulled her close. Though she allowed him to cup her face in his hands he couldn't help but notice the reluctant roll of her eyes.
"It's my hair, isn't it?" he said plaintively. "You don't want me anymore."
"Minato!" she exploded, shoving him angrily.
Considering she normally laughed off his lame jokes, he knew he wasn't just imagining this funny mood-swing. "Then it's what we talked about," he guessed. "I'm sorry if I brought up bad memories or thoughts. I shouldn't have said anything."
"That's not-" she began awkwardly. "I mean, I'm not – I don't care."
"Ok," he said quickly, seeing as how she was turning an alarming tomato colour, either in badly suppressed anger or embarrassment. "You just have some errands to run. I understand."
She nodded pensively. "Yes, exactly."
Minato smiled and pressed a short kiss to her mouth, followed by a second much longer one when she didn't object. He tasted chicken ramen and an undeniable pout, and her hands spanned his ribs – not quite affectionately; more like someone measuring a joint of meat to see if she was getting her money's worth. Breaking the kiss, she scowled at him, but kept her comments on his weight to herself.
"I missed you," he told her. It was a bit of an understatement. Although they had technically been dating for two years, the amount of time they had actually spent in each other's presence must have added up to a total of perhaps one month or two. Letters had filled the void in their relationship, but they hadn't been a fulfilling substitute. Words and paper couldn't compare to the warmth of a body, or the sound of the softly lilting whirlpool accent.
"I'm glad you're finally back, Minato," she said to the collar of his shirt.
"Don't stay out too late, Kushina."
Her hand pressed to his chest gratefully and then slid away as she moved past him. He doubted she had any actual errands, but something he'd mentioned had spooked disturbed her and he recognised her need to escape. He guiltily listened to her footsteps receding down the stairs, and when he heard the front door pull close he turned to regard his unmade bed with consternation.
Eventually he made the sheets lie flat and crawled in between them. The effort was enough that even if he hadn't been exhausted before, he certainly was now. With only a few fleeting thoughts for Kumo and Iwa and Jinchuuriki and Kushina and her bed, he closed his eyes and slept, unaware that his girlfriend had made it no further than the porch of their house and now sat on the steps staring up at the distant friendless moon with wet eyes and a growing unease in her heart.
TBC