Just as an FYI, Kurama's situation right now is this.
His actual 'body' is sealed within Akari's seal. His consciousness, however, is inhabiting a 'familiar', a body made from his Chakra which he's allowed to control. Akari did this for him so he could experience the world again, having spent more than a dozen years at absolute minimum isolated from everything. Hope that clears things up!
Also, please don't look at this as a filler chapter. I'm not filling time, I'm trying to give good ways for Akari to think about things she's done, explaining how she's grown in the past year and a half timeskip. She also gets a reason to address her own look, so you can see how she's changed things around.
Chapter 41
"Naruto, could you come here please?"
Akari had decided that, after she visited the Hokage a second time to detail how Megami no Mon worked...it was time. Time for Naruto to meet his mother. She could hear his footsteps walking along the hallway upstairs, then coming down the steps and around the corner into the living room. "What's up Kaa-san?" She patted the sofa beside her, gathering her thoughts as he sat down, folding his legs over to sit cross-legged and stare at her.
"Naruto, if...hmm." She thought for a moment. "If you could meet your mother, your birth mother that is...would you want to? Knowing she wouldn't be able to stay around, would you still want to meet her, at least once?" Looking at his face, Akari knew she'd confused Naruto with her random question.
But, just as she'd raised him, he took the question seriously, owing to the serious atmosphere Akari was exuding. "If I could meet her once...I would want to." he settled, looking at Akari in the face, though he still displayed visible confusion. "But why would you ask, Kaa-san? You told me yourself that she passed away when Kurama was forced to attack Konoha." Smiling softly, she brushed a little of his hair.
"She did. Recently I had to make a call, reveal an ability of mine I'd much rather have kept hidden for a while longer, or let my clan fall into anarchy, potentially even to their end. So...I chose to reveal something that, if the wrong people knew about it, could make me the most hunted Kunoichi across the Elemental Nations." Sighing, Akari shut her eyes. "Know that I always wanted to show you this, I just hoped you'd be a little older before it'd happen." As Naruto watched in confusion, Akari whispered the name of his mother. "Uzumaki Kushina."
As smoke appeared out of nowhere, Naruto's eyes were affixed to the smoke as, out of it, Kushina emerged, looking around in confusion. "Ehh?" Her eyes settled on Akari. "Akari-chan, what are you doing he-" She then noticed Naruto, her hands coming up to her mouth in surprise. Naruto admittedly was in a similar state of shock, since from photos he knew what Kushina looked like.
Within moments he was in her arms, the pair of them babbling to each other. Deciding discretion was the better part of valour, Akari slipped out faster than either of them could blink, getting herself a safe distance so she didn't get covered in waterworks. She left a note telling the pair that Kushina, as long as she didn't use any Chakra, would be there for a total of one hour, forty minutes, so they had time to bond. She also added an extra coded portion, just for Kushina's eyes, telling her that she had spoken to Minato, who was happy to wait until Chunin to be revealed to Naruto, and to not mention who Naruto's father was, for Naruto's sake.
Hopefully the fiery redhead would actually listen to her request.
Akari left Konoha's walls, wandering into the forest where she couldn't break anything people would care about.
As she walked, the thought about her life so far, from her first day when she came downstairs to see a breakfast styled after one her old world had, all the way to the here and now. She remembered the good, though admittedly it was outweighed heavily by the bad. Her brother having to sacrifice his vision so she could keep on seeing. Her team being massacred like lambs to the slaughter by a psychopath.
But then, to her enemies, wouldn't she be the same? She had yet to kill a hostile genin team, but with all this anger in the air, something was going to crack. Already she'd heard rumors that Iwa were getting bolder and bolder. They'd long-since stepped up from random 'bandit attacks' all the way to direct ambushing of Konoha forces. It seemed the truce from six years ago was already being left by the wayside.
She came across a clearing large enough for her training. Akari started off by cranking up her speed to 35%, then bolting to the other end of the clearing, trying to get a feel for her speed. She then came back to the side she entered from at the same speed, repeating the motion several dozen times trying to stop hersalf in the same place each time.
After she was finished doing that, she rolled her arms, clicking her fingers and performing two hand seals. She didn't speak the name of the technique, merely using the Gokakyu no Jutsu silently. It was completely by accident that she realized, just as hand seals were an assistance for focusing Chakra, so to were the names of the techniques. Aside from making it easy to say exactly what certain attacks were, it also helped focus your mind as to what you wanted to occur. Since Akari was already working on shortening the number of hand seals she used for a Jutsu, learning to not speak the name was fairly easy.
She spat the fireball directly up, there wasn't a point to destroying the lush forest around her. Cycling through Jutsu, she used most of the note-worthy abilities she possessed, from Raiton to Doton. Then, after the last vestiges of her final Jutsu petered away, she sat down with a tired sigh. Her Chakra was drained halfway from her exertions, and while it'd come back quickly, it still tired her out to use so much Chakra in one go.
As she slumped on her back to cloud-watch for a few minutes, she felt a presence approaching her. Her sensing skill was still extremely poor, but it was leagues better than it used to be. They felt pretty non-threatening, with very small Chakra reserves, so she didn't do anything but keep watching the skies as they ambled closer.
She heard grass being brushed aside as they walked, eventually sighing and rolling over to see a woman in a kimono made out of flax or hemp carrying a woven basket which was half-filled with various herbs. With an idle thought she activated her Sharingan and frowned. She wasn't a Henge, it truly was just a random woman. Dragging herself up from her prone position, she stood and thrust her hands into her pocket, wandering closer to the woman.
Out of curiosity, she peered into her basket, dredging up what she knew of herbal medicine from her Iryo-nin proficiency. There was some Oriental Motherwort, a sprig or two of Scutellaria, plus some plants she didn't recognize as well. Presumably, she was doing general foraging for whatever village she'd come from, since Oriental Motherwort was necessary for when a mother gave birth away from healthcare in case of Postpartum Hemmoraging, while Scutellaria was good to help quell diarrhea, hepatitis and inflammation.
Deciding that she didn't want to spook the woman too much, Akari made sure to step on plenty of twigs as she came closer, until finally the woman heard one snap and turned around. "Yo." She greeted casually, keeping her hands lazily in her pockets, her posture relaxed. "You searching for anything in particular?" The woman ran her eyes over Akari briefly, her lips pressing to a line.
"Yes, perhaps you'd know whether I could locate any Chrysanthemums in the area? Our village has been experiencing a lot of insect swarms recently. We could also do with some Clematis." Akar raised an eyebrow at that, since Clematis was could be pretty toxic, she herself even used a little bit of it in her poison mix. But then again, it was very useful for treating skin infections and migraines, you just had to be super careful about how much you used.
She shrugged nonchalantly. "I don't know this section of the forest too well, I think I saw a few bushes of Chrysanthemums on the way here, though I haven't seem Clematis growing anywhere around here before." The woman seemed a little surprised by her knowledge of plants. But hey, just because she was a Kunoichi didn't mean she didn't know her way around herbs, especially useful ones. "If you'd like I could have a quick run around, see if I can't spot any? I assure ya, I'm far faster than you are. No offense meant of course." She punctuated this by releasing her hold on her speed up to 20%, then zipping over to a tree, casually leaning on it. "I'm just fast when I want to be."
The woman's wide eyes came back to normal after only a moment. She'd probably run into a Shinobi or Kunoichi before considering how close she was to Konoha, which was how she accepted Akari's speed so easily. The woman gave her a list of herbs she wanted, some of which Akari knew she could track down, so she gave her a sloppy salute and zipped off to go hunt them down.
Why Akari was doing this was simple, she had to fill her time somehow. Since summoning Kushina, it had only been twenty minutes. She wanted to wait until Kushina was gone before going back home, since she honestly wasn't sure if she could actually face her.
Kurama muttered in her ear that he understood why Kushina treated him the way she did, but it didn't stop Akari from wanting to first punch the woman in the face as hard as she could, then hug her for all she was worth. Because, even if she did treat Kurama like...even if she treated him as she did, she was still Kushina, that always-smiling ex-Kunoichi who always dragged her to Ichiraku, always spent the extra time to keep in tune with everybody she knew.
...She was still the woman who lost everything.
"Why are you helping me?"
Akari shrugged. "Well, I've got nothing better to do with my time, I can't go home just yet, I still have to wait another...ten minutes or so, so maybe five minutes before I have to leave ya." The woman was about to question how on earth Akari would only need five minutes to get home, then remembered Akari's speed and shut her mouth again, shaking her head in exasperation.
Akari was the one carrying the basket now, which was laden-down with herbs of varying shapes, sizes and colours. She had also plucked a few choice pieces for her own safe-keeping, the dangerous and deadly herbs she found when rummaging, all to go into her poison-making ventures.
So far, she'd become immune to enough poisons that she could probably kill everyone in a village with ease...not that she ever would, but it would have made clearing Hideyoshi Depot a cakewalk, even if that'd mean she never ran into Deidara. But a lot of the herbs she used were hard to come by in Konoha, so she foraged for them whenever she got a chance, much to the ire of her team.
Wandering into Aina's village with her was definitely a nice change of pace from her hectic life. She didn't have to worry about a Genin team right now, or about training, or Naruto, or anything to do with her life. For just five minutes, she wasn't Uchiha Akari, Jinchuriki of Kurama, Fuinjutsu Master, none of that stuff, she was just Akari, a random helpful young Kunoichi.
She plopped the heavy basket down beside Aina's house, giving the woman a wave as she wandered back out of the village, getting an equally casual goodbye from the woman as she muttered about how she was going to get those herbs inside.
Hey, she was helpful, she wasn't Santa Claus. She walked away from the village with her hands stuffed into her pockets, straight up the side of a Hashirama tree, then from there across the forest at half her top speed, her Sharingan helping her keep her positioning on branches as she leapt from tree to tree, her hands never leaving her pockets aside from to occasionally bring various candies for her to nibble on.
Her most recent experiments were into making Mint Imperials, though it wasn't going so well. She didn't know how to make them, but was hoping her cooking proficiency would help her wiggle her way through making them, but it didn't. Every batch she tried to make always just came out...wrong. She still ate them, but they weren't the same.
She did have a large stash of regular hard mints though, since making those were comparatively-easy, Mint Imperials just seemed to evade her. Sighing, she crunched through the mint, savouring the taste for a few moments before chewing it all to pieces, then popping a new one in. She made it back to Konoha with maybe a minute or two left on Kushina's time limit, slipping straight through the gate with the aid of the Kiri-Woka no Jutsu. She hadn't signed out, so trying to enter would raise questions she couldn't be bothered to answer.
She got to her home and waited outside for a few moments, hearing Naruto and Kushina's heartfelt goodbyes to each other, sobs coming from the both of them. She tuned out anything they said, letting them have those last moments in privacy. When she felt Kushina disappear, she gave Naruto a minute before she knocked on the door. It was almost immediately flung open as the little ball of orange and energy flung himself at her.
She was ready for him to be angry that she'd kept his mother from him for so long, to yell or try to hurt her. What she didn't expect was for him to hug her tightly, bawling into her midriff. She drew him down so they were sat down, his face still buried in her clothes. "It's alright cub, let it out." She rubbed the back of his head, pressing her nose to his hair as her other arm held him in a close hug.
"C-can I-I see h-her again...?" He mumbled through hiccups and tears. Smiling, she raised his face to look at her, brushing his hair from his brow then planting a soft kiss on his forehead.
"Whenever you want." His face lit up."After the time-limit...sorry cub. I can only bring Kushina out every...three days." His face at first looked like the rapture had come, then flipped so it was like a hundred birthdays. Smiling, she brushed away the tear-tracks staining his cheeks, though a frown slipped slowly onto her lips. "Cub...did Kushina tell you anything about your father?"
Naruto's face fell a little as he mumbled. "No. She told me you asked her not to." His face wasn't accusing, that was good at least.
"Oh kit, you know I'd tell you everything if I could. But...your father had enemies. If they knew about you, they'd come after you just as a way to get revenge. I'll tell you this much though...he's...your father isn't in the same place your mother is." She pre-empted his next question. "He isn't alive though, I'm sorry. I promise that when you become Chunin, I'll let you meet the man himself. I can assure you...you'll be pleasantly surprised to meet him. I know he wants to meet you as well, but even he told me that waiting until you hit Chunin is a good idea, you have to be able to protect yourself if word of who he is gets out to his enemies."
Ruffling up Naruto's hair, Akari led him inside, already planning what food to make.
"Sensei, this is you, right?"
Looking over at Tachiko, Akari snorted. "F-Hell no that's not me, not any more." Tachiko made a face, looking at the Bingo book she was holding with disdain. "That book's gotta be like three years out of date at least. I know for a fact Iwa raised their bounty recently from 30 to 40 million Ryo, 100 million alive. Besides, look at me!" She did a twirl. "Do I really look the same?"
She'd definitely changed her ensemble a little from her old look, sporting forearm guards with plated metal, while her biceps were bare until halfway up, where her black sleeves reached, leading into a black and crimson-coloured Jonin-vest, one of her few concessions to Hiruzen's requests. She never liked how the Tokubetsu Vest she received weighed her down and ruined her entire look, but since he'd allowed her to get the Jonin Vest custom-made with the colouring she wanted, she didn't mind. Besides, her strength meant she could now wear a vest permanently with no negative effect, and it did afford her some decent protection.
Akari still wore her short combat skirt with shorts beneath, a soft crimson scarf wrapped around her neck that had her Konoha forehead protector sewn onto it. Her legs no longer had her Senbon strip, since she didn't need it, nor a Kunai holster. Instead, she had a pair of scroll holsters, each holding her own personal design of emergency explosive tags, each having enough force to level half of Konoha if they were set off. Rising to just above her knees were her usual leggings, ending in some tough, steel-toe capped boots, far superior to the toe-injury-inducing sandals other Shinobi wore for some inane reason.
Finally, on the small of her back, was her main pouch, which held her 'storage scrolls', which was how she explained how she could pull practically everything from almost nothing. Her forearm guards had seals on them as well, which dispensed her Kunai, Senbon, as well as all her knives, though they were also fitted with capture seals, so if she dropped her knives, they would be re-sealed. That didn't work if she threw one, it detected that and let the blade fly, but it meant she could on the fly go from unarmed, armed, then back to unarmed in the blink of an eye, making her a monster to fight against. "I guess not."
Grinning, Akari snagged Tachiko's Bingo Book, holding it up. "So, where'd you get ahold of one of these? I know they only give these out to Chunin, and while you kits are good, I don't quite think you'd be able to handle Kiri's Chunin exams..." She ignored Aiko's boisterous complaint about how they'd totally smash Kiri's challenges to pieces, she knew better than he, those brats in Kiri would chew her Genin to pieces. "...so the only ways I see you getting one is by stealing it, borrowing it, or finding it because you're lucky." She kept going, but Tachiko winced ever so faintly when she mentioned stealing it, so she knew the girl had pinched it from somewhere. Tossing the book in the air, she incinerated it with a weak Gokakyu no Jutsu.
As Tachiko stared at the ashes of what she'd worked hard to get, Akari dug her own Bingo Book out of her inventory, throwing it towards the girl with a grin. Her's was actually in-date, so if she was trawling for information on other Konoha-nin as well as enemies they might run into, she'd get way more mileage out of that book than a three-year-outdated one. "T-thank you Sensei!"
She waved the girl off. "Next time just ask me!" Akari went back to scrolling through her menus aimlessly, eventually noticing her notifications had an alert she had somehow not spotted. Opening the menu, she read what was written and summarized her reactions in four words. "Oh, fuck you Game.
Quest completed!
Botany Bitc-
I know, I know, these are getting shorter.
The problem is that I don't have much to work with here. In a few months time the Chunin exams are going to be happening in Konoha, so Akari's going to be watching her Genin do that, but then after that...pretty much nothing is going to happen, not until Naruto hits Genin.
...I hate to say it, but I think this story might come to a close before Chapter 65...just give it some thought, what events can even happen any more? With Danzo and Orochimaru gone, a lot of future events can't happen. The only thing I could have happen is...hmm, actually, I have a good idea!
So, Chunin Exams probably next chapter or two, plus a mystery event.
(I don't mean this is ending in a few chapters! Sorry for the misunderstanding, I meant in 20 or so chapters, that seems like how far this story will go, in my eyes at least. I just meant the mystery event and Chunin Exams were going to happen.)
Name: Akari Uchiha
Level: 112
Age: 17
Experience: 73,921/112,000
To Next Level: 40,268
Title: Sannin-slayer - Defeating one of the three legendary sannin is no easy feat, but you managed it. Future opportunities unlocked.
Secondary Title: Jonin - +25% Experience gained working with Genin
Health Points: 25,000 - (100 Base + (Vit x End)) x 5
Regeneration Rate - 4900/m - 81.6*/s - Vit x End - Halted when afflicted with bleed status.
Chakra Points: 41,000 - (100 Base + (Int x Wis)) x 5
Regeneration Rate - 8100/m - 135/s - Int x Wis - Halted when continuous chakra drain Jutsu in use.
Strength - 70
Vitality - 70
Endurance - 70
Intelligence - 90
Agility - 296
Wisdom - 90
Luck - 70