(A/N) I hope you all have had a wonderful January! We move onto the Festival itself! There will be more of that chakra nature thing explained later, don't you worry! There's another chapter of this, because why would we ever stick to my outline.
"It's sunset! FINALLY!" Kushina cheered, kicking in the door to where Minato was attempting to practice the fingerings he'd been shown. "Come on come on come on! It's time for the festival!"
Minato blinked dumbly at her for a long moment, then visibly shook himself out of it and started putting away the flute.
"Come on come on! Hurry up!" She insisted, pulling on his shirt sleeve. If he didn't hurry up they'd be late! And they couldn't have that!
"I'm working on it!" Minato squawked, closing the flute case. The flute put away properly, Kushina dragged him out to Tadaaki, then grabbed his sleeve too and dragged them both up to the deck.
The sky was streaked with red and orange and pink, the sun rapidly disappearing below the horizon. Little red lights lined the sails and mast, plus the lanterns hung on each corner. The whole ship was cast in red, and Kushina loved it. She always loved this time of year, when everything was cast in the bloody red that marked them as Uzumaki. She could see some people that had already used seals to light their hair up, each casting a dim red light.
"You're just in time!" Kamiko appeared in front of them. "We just finished lighting all the lanterns!" Kushina beamed when she spotted the bells also glowing with ethereal light.
"Who's doing the fireworks this year?" Kushina asked, bouncing slightly. It wasn't her or her mom, she'd know if it was that, so she had to know who!
"Do I want to know what fireworks are?" Tadaaki asked hesitantly.
"Probably not," Mitoko said, over Kushina and Kamiko's assurances that he did. "But you'll learn anyway. They're controlled explosions in the sky that we make from seals. Families of the Hogo Uzu branch take turns doing the fireworks for the festival. I believe Takumei and Yuudai are doing the fireworks for our ship. They were quite enthusiastic when they volunteered."
"Oh, this'll be good then!" Kushina cheered. Takumei and Yuudai were super good at explosions and fireworks! They'd totally do super well!
"They are good at blowing holes in other ships," Mitoko agreed, amused.
Kushina snickered quietly at Minato's mildly worried expression, along with Tadaaki's expression that read like he was trying to decide whether he should run now.
"A real help in battle," Mitoko continued, waving to two men who were hunched over a table drawing. "I heard they're thinking of adopting soon, maybe even a mist orphan from one of the islands we're stealing."
"Oh, that'd be super cool!" Kushina agreed happily. "They'd totally be great parents!"
Her mom ruffled her hair. "Of course." She ruffled Minato and Tadaaki's hair as well. "You guys want glow sticks or glow seals? I drew up extra."
"I drew up my own!" Kushina assured her mother, brandishing the glow seals she'd made earlier. "They make your hair glow! So, back of neck or forehead!" She slapped one onto her own forehead, knowing her hair had lit up with a fairly strong glow.
"Then what's a glow stick?" Tadaaki asked, looking almost like he didn't actually want to know the answer.
Kushina blinked at him. "Exactly what it sounds like, silly. A glowing stick. Duh." She pulled one from a storage seal and brandished it at Tadaaki. It glowed red of course, but she was good at other colors too!
"Well, I'm pretty sure you guys haven't managed to meet most of the crew, so try and socialize with them at least a little bit," Mitoko clapped her hands together. "But more importantly, have fun!"
"We will!" Kushina chirped, scanning the deck for any people she knew. Ooh, she knew Kou, who she could see dancing along to the song Hoshiko was playing. But Kou was kind of busy. Hiro and Kazuko probably were too, since Kushina didn't see them anywhere. Oo, looked like Minori wasn't doing much. And Yuichi was off somewhere else, so she was totally up for talking!
Kushina made her decision and dragged Minato and Tadaaki towards Minori.
"Minori!" Kushina hollard as soon as she was even remotely in hearing range.
She turned around, the black and white and black barred feathers in her hair standing out starkly against her red hair. "Ah, hello. You're Mitoko's guppy, right? What was your name?"
"Kushina!" Kushina replied immediately. She'd talked to Minori all of maybe three times, and usually just in passing, so she wasn't surprised she didn't know her name. "And this is Minato and Tadaaki!"
She inclined her head to the two boys. "A pleasure to meet you. I'm Minori Akai Arashi."
"U-um," Tadaaki spoke up nervously. "What a-are the feathers in your hair from?"
"Hm?" Minori reached up and touched one of the white and black barred feathers like she'd forgotten they were there. Honestly Kushina wouldn't be surprised, one of the times she'd met Minori was a visit in the hospital, and she'd still had some feathers in. Kushina was pretty sure she only swapped out the feathers every month or two and otherwise left them alone. "Oh, yes, they're from two of my summons, Bokuto and Akaashi this time. Bokuto has the white and black barred feathers, and Akaashi the black ones."
"You summon owls?" Minato asked. He looked confused. Kushina beamed. She knew this story! Albeit kind of chopped up because the time she'd heard it Minori had been very high on pain meds. But what can you do when the person you're talking to has been out of surgery to repair splintered ribs for about four hours.
"Yep! Picked up the contract from a skeleton near Kumo!"
"A skeleton?" Tadaaki squeaked.
"Oh yeah!" Minori agreed. "I mean, it's better than a mummified frozen corpse, so I'll take what I can get. So I was on a mission up in these mountains, right."
"Right," Minato agreed.
"And the whole point of the mission was to check for these frozen mummified corpses because people die going up those mountains a lot, so every once in a while there's this mission to go check so they can do all the right stuff for the people."
"Gruesome," Tadaaki said, shivering slightly.
"It's awesome," Kushina agreed, beaming. She couldn't wait to be old enough to go on one of the missions.
"But so apparently, after finding most of the corpses up there, I found this snowy owl that lead me to a cave with a skeleton inside. I think it was a Kumo nin or something that had tried to climb it, then got stuck in the cave, and died, then rotted away instead of being frozen like most corpses. It'd been a really warm summer that time so there was less snow and ice then usual, which I think is why no one else had found that cave."
"So it was usually blocked," Minato guessed.
Minori nodded. "Yep! So I find this, and the owl, who I have since found out is one of the ambassador animals for the summoning contract, basically they stay in the human world whenever there aren't any summoners and look for a new summoner, so he helps me find this summoning scroll."
"Then you signed it!" Kushina burst in, unable to contain herself any longer.
"Then I signed it!" Minori agreed cheerfully, unbothered. "So, finally meeting the crew, eh?"
Kushina nodded happily. "Finally got these two in one place for a while so Imma introduce them to everyone!"
"Except Hiro and Kazuko." Minori said. "They're busy. Do not try to find them. And do not ask what they were doing in the morning."
Kushina nodded wisely. She knew what they were doing, even if she doubted Minato and Tadaaki did. "Of course. Is anyone else similarly busy?"
Minori spun in a slow circle. "I can't see Riko, Mekane, and Yoshio, so they're probably busy if I know them, Isao isn't up here, but they'll be up here soon with food, so that's not an issue."
"They don't like that kind of busy anyway," Kushina agreed, nodding solemnly. Tadaaki and Minato looked extremely confused, so Kushina just laughed and clapped them on the back. "Don't worry about it! You'll understand when you're older!"
"Kushina, you're younger then both of us," Minato pointed out quietly. "My birthday's in January and Tadaaki's is in May."
"And?" Kushina challenged him. "Just because I'm younger by a couple months doesn't mean I don't know way more about stuff then you do! Especially about Uzushio stuff! I got the talk ages ago!"
Minato paled a couple shades. "That talk? The Talk with a capital T?"
"Yeah! I got it when I became a genin, obviously. Doesn't Konoha do it when you reach Chuunin or something?"
"No they do it at Genin too as far as I know," Minori offered. "I knew a Konoha genin that knew all about that."
"Oh cool," Kushina decided. "And Iwa?" She turned to Tadaaki expectantly. Weirdly, he was also very pale, bordering on green. "Are you alright? Did you get seasick or something?"
"Nope," he said weakly. "Just realized what you were talking about."
Kushina cackled, clapping him on the back. "Don't worry! We have silencing seals and locks for a reason! You won't run into anything here!"
Out of the corner of her eye she could see Minato slowly turning very very red. Almost as red as his hair was right now! Maybe it was time for a topic change.
"Can I make your hair glow?" She asked Minato. He jumped slightly and she laughed at him.
"No thank you," he said, edging towards Tadaaki. It's cute how he thought she wouldn't notice.
"Fine, fine, bye Minori! We gotta meet more people!" Kushina waved, and started dragging the two boys away.
(A/N) Did you like it being from Kushina's perspective? I thought it'd be a nice change of pace for a while. Plus we'd get more showing then explaining with her. And ridiculous stories as she gets mentally sidetracked after two seconds. Any preference as to who's pov next chapter is in? It'll be a continuation of the festival and more meeting some people. Unless everyone hates the collection of oc's you've met so far, in which case too bad, you get them anyway. They're all my babies and I love them very much. Don't like, I dunno why you picked up a fic set primarily in Uzushio. Or on an Uzushio ship anyway. I would apologize for forgetting to update, but I'm too tired right now.