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Thank you, everyone. I've just been weighing myself down with projects and responsibilities, and that's my bad. Writing this story and my former stories hasn't been a chore; each chapter I feel like I'm getting better at writing, I have fun and it makes my day to see how much you guys enjoy reading.
I appreciate every single one of you for sticking with me on this story and all those that have been having fun with me from the start.
Enough boring talk!
Warning! There will be mention of house fires and that may trigger some people, so take this as fair warning. Finally, in the last chapter, I forgot to write down the age changes that happened after that five year time skip. It'll be in the Authors note at the end of this chapter.
Enjoy…
CHAPTER 9
Five years ago
Uzushiogakure no Sato
Blue hunched over and vomited, expelling sea water from his body and onto the beach. His eyes watered as he dry heaved, coughing painfully as his sore throat forced out more water, until there was nothing left to bring out.
He crawled on his hands and knees, the movement bore on his unused bones and joints, of which hastily repaired itself, seeming like his body was doing a full system reboot. He slinked into the water, stopping when it was ankle deep and his thighs were immersed in the water. The man splashed water onto his face and his hands rubbed his thudding forehead.
"My achin…"
His voice was cracked, croaky and thick with disuse. He cleared his throat and spat far into the water, dipping forward and dunking his head in the water, hoping to quell the clamouring in his skull. Blue lifted out of the water and sighed when his headache reduced to a dull throb in the back of his skull, an ignorable pain.
He looked down at his reflection and blinked slowly.
Realization arrived a moment later.
"So this is blindness, huh."
He might have been as blind as a bat, but his sensory abilities splashed the world with colourful shades of blue, black and white, painting the environment in miraculously fine, delicate details with his chakra.
Naruto gently placed his hands on his face, on the stubbly beard on his lower face. His skin had become looser, deathly pale, a pale that could only be compared to a cadaver, though he did not look like he had lost much weight, not anything he couldn't regain with time.
A crow flapped onto his hunched shoulder, twisting its head to the side and watching with its right eye to the Uchiha, who was blindly blinking at the birds reflection.
"…Can you speak?" Blue asked scratchily.
"I can speak." The black bird answered with a neck ruffle, returning an eye to the man kneeling in the water.
"I'm in Uzushio." Even from here, the man could hear the loud splashing of the country's whirlpools, a distinct water feature that was uncommon on any other part of the continent.
"If you know the answer, then why bother asking?" the bird squawked. "Save your strength."
Blue's attention was taken to the blips of black chakra that circled over his head, some perched themselves on the sandy beach of Uzushio, aimlessly pecking at the ground, hopping about or watching the man with their beady, black eyes, muffling their noises in a strange show of due respect.
The man saw their chakra cores and their networks spread, giving a little definition to their wings, their heads and their clawed feet.
Ever so slowly, the gravity of the situation hit the genius Uchiha.
He literally saw the Grim Reaper rip his soul out of his body.
One couldn't get any deader than that.
Yet…he wasn't dead, not for long anyway.
His logical brain aptly didn't see himself as a bird and at the same time, he didn't see himself as a scroll. "What…am I?"
"You are our Summoning contract…and you are much more…" the bird seemed to shake its head, itself not sure where to begin explaining the mind bending realities of the universe that Blue was about to unlock, the truth of life and existence that had been thrust upon him by his death and subsequent return.
Blue grunted and fell back into the water, creating a large splash as a result. The crow leaped into the air and hovered over Naruto's prone body, his mouth and nose just barely left the water.
The crow landed on the man's chest, nestling down and tucking its wings close to its body.
"I'm…Why do I feel so… lopsided…"
Uneven.
Imbalanced.
Incomplete.
"Is it because I have only half of my soul?"
"You already have the answers." The crow responded with a short cry. "I need not say anything…it would come to you with time. What I can easily explain is that you are anchored to the mortal realm by the other half of your soul being sealed inside Minato Namikaze, the Yondaime Hokage, and also by virtue of your previous state of being human." It lowered its head and gently tapped its beak on the centre of Blue's chest, wetting its head a little before it rose back up. "There is a soul in your body…but you are not alive…"
With having only half a soul, Blue felt bone tired, as if his very being was weighing him down and that his immersed self could ever rise up again.
The tide washed down, then washed over him, pushing him back onto land and leaving him in the beach, spread-eagle on the sand and sightlessly staring at the yellow sun beaming down on the isolated island of the Uzumaki clan.
The sensation was akin to wearing clothes five times too big for him and ten times heavier than what he remembered it to be.
The black blips of chakra surrounded him and the crow roosting on Blue's chest murmured.
"All will make sense soon." It opened its wings and a few crows flew away, going about functions Naruto was too weak to consciously comprehend. His eyelids became heavier and the soft sway of the ocean permeated into his being, accompanied by the breeze washing over him. "Rest."
Naruto's consciousness slipped into the embrace of sweet sleep.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Before there was life and death, there was the god tree.
Less than sentient and standing tall on the solid earth of the barren planet, the god tree did not have any thoughts or consciousness to wonder how it came upon the world it was currently rooted in.
Two strips of bark fell from the god tree, somehow forming the Summoning Contract for the Crows, the harbingers of death and destruction, and the Summoning Contract for Golden Koi fish, bringers of life and sustenance.
These were the only two contracts made from the god tree, though as soon as they were made they were hidden away from the grabbing hands of humans by a series of miraculously natural events, until Orochimaru of the Sannin uncovered the whereabouts of the Crow contract.
Animal contracts were an ancient creation and one agreeable similarity the first two summons' had with their predecessors was that their contracts were the totality of their existence; the scroll human summoners signed with their blood contained a special seal complex called the Infinite Dimensional Storage seal, which was the seal that formed their different summoning realms.
Except that the first two summons' didn't have their realms connected to that of their predecessors, for their home realms were beyond logical and sensible comprehension.
Summoning Contracts were the homes of the animal summons and they were also the glue that bound them together, quite literally their sentience, their chakra networks, their abilities and their connectedness, devolving them to their base animal awareness.
The home realm of the crows was the underworld.
Orochimaru didn't know that by merging the piece of the crow summoning contract with the heart of her dead child, he became the underworld.
The Crow Contract.
The abyss.
Hell.
Blue's intellect was entirely his, the crows had nothing to do with that, and his proficiency in the shinobi arts also had nothing to do with being the embodiment of the underworld.
Dying in order to awaken to this reality of being the contract for an ancestral summons was unfortunate, but what Blue considered more unfortunate was being unable to move for the majority of two years.
He couldn't feel his fingers.
He couldn't feel his toes.
He couldn't feel his face.
He couldn't feel anything.
The blue Uchiha laid on the sands of Uzushio, shaded from the sun by a crudely made canopy of palm tree leaves and dried grass, crafted by the birds he commanded. They dropped soft, unseasoned, raw fish in his mouth, doing their best to help him chew and swallow, though these acts were made difficult because they only had claws and beaks.
The birds were clearly unused to any other function other than taking lives and carrying souls to the underworld, their home realm, where those souls would either be eternally tormented and tortured for their sins or transported to the heavens, where the Golden Koi fish tended to them in comfort and serenity.
His soul didn't fit his body.
To pass the time, he conversed with the crows.
They were as curious of him and he was of them, tentatively going about him and speaking to him with unsure reverence.
Blue was the underworld, the abyss, their home, so in more ways than one he was their master and he was also the accumulation of death.
The blue Uchiha explicitly commanded the crows not to inform his mother of him being alive, because he didn't want the Sannin to rush over to Uzushio and mother him back to health.
He wanted to get back onto his feet with his own strength.
And, with time, he did.
Close to the end of the second year of being painfully immobilized, he was finally able to wiggle his fingers and toes, then weeks passed of this daily exercise and he was able to feel the chakra he continuously pushed through his body surge through the tenketsu of his arms and legs. Forcefully circulating his chakra was something he did on instinct when he was alive in order to expand his chakra network and make performing jutsus easer, but now it was a chakra training exercise he used to reacclimatize his incomplete soul with his body.
Naruto got enough control of his arms to be able to drag himself on the ground, excruciatingly pulling forward on his belly with his hands and elbows, biting his teeth at the agonizing levels of pain he had to do in order to summon that amount of movement.
His muscles screamed and his bones splintered, for circulating chakra or not, helplessly not using them for the majority of two years took a toll on them.
Those days of him pulling himself forward on his belly, he looked less human and more snake; his black-blonde hair was dirty with sand and soil, his fingernails were cracked, and his chest and abdomen were populated with scratches from stones and hard sand. His milky white eyes were narrowed with determination through all this.
Blood leaked from his mouth and ears at the progressively vigorous movement.
From crawling on his belly like a reptile, he graduated to crawling on his hands and knees.
Then, several weeks later, he retaught himself how to walk.
His steps were staggering and his feet wobbled terribly, but the blue eyed man, by sheer force of will, pushed harder on the limits his weakened body as his body begged him to lie down and accept his fate as a cripple.
Then Blue began jogging, and after that he entered a full-on sprint.
When the Uchiha war veteran was positive he could sustain a hard run for at least five minutes, he retrained himself in the shinobi arts.
His body hadn't forgotten this and his mind knew what to do, it was that he needed to put in more effort than he really should have, more effort than when he learnt those skills for the first time.
It was taxing in on itself to reinstruct himself on the proper way to perform a proper taijutsu chain attack, where he would execute a sequence of punches and kicks in a short amount of time and without wasting movement.
Blue's training took him into Uzushio, through the empty streets and picking whatever weapon he found that he had formerly known how to use and re-educating himself once again.
Being the embodiment of the underworld and the Master of the Crows meant that he well and truly couldn't be called human anymore.
Through the course of his retraining, he was made to accept that he was an unexplainable existence.
Demi-god?
A kami?
What he understood was that, as soon as he reached the strength he possessed when he was alive, he was able to shoot past that bare limitation.
Blue was an extension of the god tree, the primordial being that overlooked the creation of the universe in all its unaware insentience, who laid down the foundation for chakra once Kaguya Otsutsuki first consumed its fruit.
The blue Uchiha was hell and he had dominion over all condemned within him.
It was both an enjoyable adventure and a painful experience learning all the marvellous things he could do with his newfound deity-hood.
The crows he commanded found their place below him.
History was a little bit incorrect in saying that crows were the messengers of the Shinigami.
No.
They were the Messengers of Death.
Four years after returning from the dead, Naruto "Blue" Uchiha crafted himself a sailboat and took his time braving the open ocean back to the continent.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Present time
Former ROOT base
Kiriagakure no Sato
Water country
Reclining on a tree branch and leaning on the trunk, Blue hummed pleasantly and placed his right hand behind his head, crossing his right ankle over his left and placing his other hand on his stomach. His black was open a little from the bottom, showing his bandage wrapped feet and the dark shinobi sandal he was wearing, black shinobi pants that reached a bit over his ankles and the standard ninja weapons securely strapped to each of his thighs.
His high collar cloak gave nothing else away.
A light breeze swept through the thick mist of the forest, ruffling his shaggy hair and making the bang covering the right side of his face. The pale man wrinkled his nose, blinking the eyes underneath the clean set of bandages covering them and he frowned.
"It's taking her longer than I thought…"
A short distance from him was the wreckage of a building pulsing with blazing hot fire and pitch black smoke, distinct from the white mist permeating through the forest in Kiri. The area of the blast was focused on the top floor and the floor beneath it, leaving the bottom floor horribly dilapidated.
Blue's ears twitched at the sounds of fighting from the crumbling building, noises of blade against blade and limbs crunching chillingly.
He wasn't worried about Orochimaru's safety.
The black haired Sannin hadn't become a Sannin by standing back while her former teammates fought.
The Snake Lady wasn't some helpless damsel.
He purposely left the fighting for her at her insistence; she held a grudge on all of ROOT for participating in her son's death.
During the four years of Naruto's self-rehabilitation, she had been on a crusade against ROOT, raiding their bases and slaughtering their numbers. It wasn't very hard to uncover their role in the plot, but finding their bases was a challenge in on itself, even with the genius scientist's immense resources.
When she was sure that there was no ROOT on the continent, her next target was Minato Namikaze.
A ghost of a smile came to his hidden mouth when he perceived feet padding towards him.
The dozens of crows perched on the tree and more dozens comfortably nestled on trees surrounding their master perked up when a blood soaked Sannin came under to the tree Blue was coolly lying on.
The woman grinned sadistically, displaying her fanged canines and closing her eyes gleefully, tossing to the base of the tree a decapitated head of what looked like an unmasked ROOT shinobi who had the poor luck of being the last one to die; his nose was non-existent at that point, his teeth were incomplete his eyes were swollen shut, patches of his brunette hair was ripped off and parts of his skull was caved in. a truly tragic death.
Orochimaru grisly beam widened.
"They're all dead."
Her son's smile lifted and he tilted his head to the side, seeming like he was looking down from his perch from behind his bandages and his blindness. "Did you have fun?"
The woman scoffed. "It would have been more fun if they screamed louder but," she shrugged, looking down on her blood drenched clothes. "This'll have to do until I find more of them."
"What of Danzo?"
"Incinerated beyond the point of recovery." She answered, undoing her purple sash and taking off her battle kimono without so much as a hint of hesitation or shame, doing so by pulling it over her head and dumping the bloody cloth on the ground. Under her kimono was a white vest and a crimson red sports bra. The Uchiha man hummed and turned away; even though he couldn't see, his sensory perception was thorough enough to draw the world in finer details. Without needing to be told, the crows looked away, out of respect for the woman's son, who just so happened to be their master. "He died long before I came for him." the Sannin hopped out of her pants and dumped it with her kimono and sash, setting fire to the clothes a moment later with a flippantly thrown fire jutsu. She unsealed a new set of clothes and put them on; she would take a proper bath later. "What are you going to do?"
"I'll bring him back."
The hand on his stomach came up and he rolled his wrist. A black crow flapped out of a deathly darkness from his wrist and perched on his shoulder. This one had a bandage wrapped around its head, covering its left eye.
The bird looked around, confused, before it jerked as it saw the side profile of the blue Uchiha.
" Kukuku~" Orochimaru chuckled, leaning her shoulder on the tree Blue was reclined on.
If it was any other person, she would have felt a toxic jealousy at the ease at which he had brought back a dead person, while she had dedicated a large chunk of her life to perfecting and mastering the Impure World Resurrection jutsu.
But this was Naruto, her son.
She couldn't be jealous even if she tried.
"Kiri ninjas will be here soon to investigate the explosion."
"And?" Orochimaru asked, a slender eyebrow raised.
The blind man rolled his eyes. "Killing everyone in sight isn't the answer to everything, Orochi." He shrugged casually. "Not all the time, anyway."
"I can divert them from here. Give you enough time to interrogate Danzo." She pushed off the tree, dusting off her shoulders and cracking her fists. She threw a playful smirk over her shoulder, to the Master of Crows. "I still don't get why you don't want to let the world know your alive, Naruto."
"I don't need the world to know I'm alive." His face lowered fractionally and the woman spied a dark, devilish smirk crawl up Blue's face. "Just Minato."
It drove harsh chills up her spine at the killer intent pulsating from her son, conjuring images of shadow swaddled death and despair over his anxiously murderous form.
Oh the horrors that awaited Minato.
The snake lady departed to throw off the Kiri ninjas, leaving Blue with Crow-Danzo.
"Now," Blue readjusted himself on the branch, lacing his fingers under his midnight black cloak, over his abdomen and looking like the epitome of ease and relaxation as the crows sitting and standing on trees all around him raptly watched him, silent as the dead of night and unruffled at how the war hawk had been pulled out of the underworld in the form of a crow. "Tell me Minato's investments in Iwa."
Against his will, Crow-Danzo's beak opened and he whispered into Blue's ear, laying out all the money the Namikaze Hokage would pouring into Iwagakure for the sake of making more money in return, aptly forgetting the bad blood Konoha had with the Hidden Rock in favour of filling his pockets.
Minato had investments in a real estate agency in Iwa, specifically a town in the far-east, and that agency connected to another one he owned thirty percent of shares in the far west region of Fire country. Those two housing agencies were currently a large source of where Minato was getting his millions.
Blue once owned a large real estate agency, until he willingly signed all his worldly possessions to his nephew. That agency was based in Fire country and had been growing in Kumo and Waterfall for some years now, deepening their roots in those two hidden villages under the close management of Blue's Iron Accountant with the consent of the blue sniper, so Naruto knew very well how profitable real estate was on their continent.
It would be a major blow on Minato's money if he burnt the real estate agency and all the property to the ground. So far, Blue had destroyed Minato's properties in Fire country but that wasn't going to be the end of it.
Crow-Danzo didn't know much of the extent of Minato's real estate investments but Blue hummed in thought, understanding that even though his agency had a wider reach, Minato's real estate mostly- not only-dealt with luxury apartments and was thus richer. Crow-Danzo only knew where the agency's headquarters was located but it was too well-guarded to be approached.
" Tch."
That wouldn't be a problem.
Razing a building to the ground wasn't going to be so difficult to do, not when he could summon hellfire, but in order to cripple those real estate agencies Minato had money in, he would have to strike all the houses the agency sold or rented. He could get his Iron Accountant to offer the occupants of those properties more affordable houses from his real estate agency before he set fire to their houses; not only would it bring in more money for his nephew but it would cripple the Hokage. There was an insurance company the Iron Accountant could just as quickly buy out and work hastily to cover the occupants of the house before the fire was to erupt.
If there was a fire, then the people would think it was a gas leak and when news got to them that all of the houses the real estate company owned had gone up in flames, then that business was as good as ruined. The insurance company would perform as intended, slyly partnering up with the agency Blue owned, and the people that had lost their houses to the fire would come to Blue's real estate agency in droves.
That accountant had been informed of him being alive soon after returning to the continent and he had been told to follow through with the plan to pass his billions over to Itachi.
The Iron Accountant only needed a handful of hours to buy out the insurance company Minato's real estate agency was partnered with, and seeing as in roughly twenty hours the Iron Accountant was due to meet with Itachi in Konoha, it was just enough time to get everything ready.
It was too bad that people were going to lose their houses and it was a little compensation for competently reliable insurance to come through for them.
He promptly sent a crow to convey the message to that accountant; Itachi didn't yet own the account and at the moment, Blue and the accountant had authority over the money.
Naruto didn't quite need help committing arson but this was a good time if any to reconnect with an old friend.
He channelled chakra into a seal on his left upper arm to Orochimaru and then he hopped down from the tree. Before his feet touched the ground, he dispersed into a viciously cawing murder of crows.
Naruto had control over an uncountable number of crows and he was the personification of the underworld, so he knew- very much so-the machinations that threatened his plans.
One of the cogwheels was headed to Konoha to cause chaos.
Blue wasn't bothered by it though.
Kushina could handle herself.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
08:11PM
Yugao and Kureanai's Apartment
Okami-Luna Apartment Complex
Hiruzen Sarutobi Street
Konohagakure no Sato
On the same street as the Sarutobi clan compound was the Okami-Luna Apartment Complex, one of many buildings Blue's real estate agency owned and collected regular payments from. The complex had ten apartments inside and each apartment were two rooms, a bathroom, a kitchen and a living room. The complex had a laundry room for those interested in doing their own laundry, a boiler room that maintained a steady of hot water and a smaller house at the back that contained the large generator that would automatically switch on if there was a power outage in the village.
There were three other Okami-Luna complexes of the same structure as this one around the village and dozens more around Fire country, some in Waterfall and some in Kumo.
For somewhere so sophisticated and properly managed, the rent wasn't so unreasonable.
Soon after Blue had been reported dead, Yugao had moved out of her former apartment to this one and Kureanai had followed suit some days later. The purple haired swordmaster had done so out of impulse but it wasn't a bad decision either.
Currently, Yugao and Kureanai were hosting a small celebration for Itachi, Shisui and Izumi graduating.
The genjutsu prodigy had brought along his younger brother and the four year old child was now animatedly watching a cartoon on the television, even as most of the guests made their way out.
Kureanai kissed Asuma goodnight and the red eyed woman waved as the Sarutobi man turned down the stairs, whipping out a cigarette from his pocket and lighting it, inhaling a relieved puff into his lungs and grumbling inaudibly at being unable to smoke during the party; Kureanai didn't like seeing him smoke and Yugao didn't want the smell to get stuck on their furniture.
Inside the apartment, Kushina leaned down and playfully ruffled Sasuke's hair, though the boy was too absorbed in the cartoon to take much notice. The red haired woman straightened up with a warm smile and yanked Izumi into a tight hug.
"Congrats again, Zoomi."
"Thanks, sensei."
Despite the motion, the Uzumaki's clothes didn't ruffle; she was wearing a grey and red tracksuit with stripes running down the shoulders and the sides of her pants. The tracksuit jacket was fully unzipped to show a black T-shirt and the sleeves of the jacket were pulled up half-way up her forearms, displaying long sleeved mesh armour. On her feet were plain white sneakers and her straight red hair fell down her shoulders in all its untangled glory, smelling distinctively of roses and ramen, Izumi idly noted as she pressed her face into her teachers side, getting a brief whiff. The girl was still wearing the black shirt and black shinobi pants of that afternoon, though she visibly had no weapons on her person and her the ponytail on the right side of her sported a butterfly scrunchie.
"Aw sensei~" Shisui moaned, sitting on a chair and also watching the cartoon, stuffing his face with caramel popcorn without a care in the world. The other Uchiha boy was in a deep blue jacket that was zipped all the way to the top, hiding his chin, and shorts that were a far darker shade of blue with black ninja sandals and bandages around his left calf. He had black bandages around his left wrist and there was a sheathed tanto on the ground, next to his chair. He was often teased for having long, full eyelashes, something that made him look fairly feminine. Shisui was sitting on the chair with his legs crossed and he was wearing his hitaite. He beamed at his former class teacher. "What about me?"
"I expect a lot from you three." Kushina answered, closing her eyes and laughing when she noticed that Shisui had reached the bottom of his popcorn. She cast a look over at Itachi, who was searching for ice cream in the fridge and holding a spoon in his right hand. "I'm sure that Blue would be so happy to see how much you three have grown."
"We won't let you down, sensei." Itachi droned as he righted up, holding a tub of strawberry ice cream.
"Don't be late for team assignments tomorrow, ok?" she gave Izumi a parting squeeze before releasing the girl, tousling her hair as the girl reluctantly let go of her tracksuit jacket.
"Hai, sensei!" the three Uchiha genin said in unison. The Uzumaki billionaire had given them their graduation presents at the start of the celebration; for Shisui, Kushina gifted him two pairs of sturdy yet flexible shinobi sandals that could keep up with his fast, blurry movements, seeing as the boy was popularly called Shunshin no Shisui. Izumi had gotten a new bow staff made out of a mixture of adamantium and chakra metal from Snow country; it could be collapsed from seven and a half feet long to two and a half feet, and accompanying the firm grip the metal staff had in the twelve year old girls hand, Izumi's new staff was armed with two short blades on both ends. For Itachi, his former class teacher had given him a long sleeved mesh armour undershirt. It wasn't very fancy but Itachi seemed to appreciate the gesture, so it was fine.
It took an active effort on Kushina's part to not display her favouritism for the three Uchiha kids in class but they were truly remarkable children.
It was an Uzumaki tradition to hand gifts to people they considered family; it was their way of saying that they- the Uzumaki-wanted them- the gift receivers'-to use the gifts given to them to defend themselves and those they hold dear.
Though Shisui had gotten two ninja sandals and Itachi a mesh undershirt, Izumi had been given a bow staff because, and Kushina would have to bashfully admit, that the girl was her best student.
A true teacher's pet, but Kushina wasn't complaining.
It was a conflict of interest and morality to give children those sort of gifts, because mesh under armour implied that Itachi may or may not be stabbed in the future, footwear for Shisui hinted that the boy might use them to flee and a bow staff for Izumi inferred that the girl could use it to crush someone's head into paste, but theirs was a crazy world.
As said before, people were past accepting the madness of their world.
"I'm going now." The Uzumaki woman said and zipped her tracksuit jacket halfway, pulling her sleeves up a little. "I need to buy some skin cream before it goes out of stock."
There was a flush from the toilet and Yugao came out, zipping up her shorts. "You're going? C'mon Kushina, stayyyyy."
The redhead laughed quietly. "You'll just have to deal with Mikoto by yourself for tonight."
Yugao didn't really like Mikoto; it had been a chore in on itself to let Sasuke stay for a few hours to celebrate his older brother's graduation from the Academy. The clan heads wife would undoubtedly find a few nasty words to say about her missing best friend as she came to pick up her youngest child, for Itachi was once again planning to stay the night in Yugao and Kureanai's apartment.
Yugao wanted to be civil.
She really did.
For Naruto's sake, she wanted to be civil.
The purple haired sword prodigy had endured years of verbal abuse from Blue's older sister, minding her own business at her friends insistence, but it was only a matter of time before Mikoto said something so toxic and foul that that grain of self-restraint was shatter irreparably.
"Can't you at least leave a Shadow clone?" the ANBU jounin captain pleaded, unmindful of the three Uchiha twelve year olds watching her, not doing such a good job at hiding their amusement. "You've got like…a butt load of chakra to throw around!"
The Uzumaki Princess smiled airily, walking to the door. "Goodnight, Yugao."
Her only reply was a petulant groan.
"Goodnight, Kushina." Kureanai said, on behalf of herself and her roommate, smiling apologetically for Yugao's silliness. "Are you still up for that chess competition at the Nara compound?"
Kushina scratched the back of her head, teetering in place. "I'm terrible with strategy games but I'll come and cheer for your boyfriend."
Kureanai giggled at the honesty of the Uzumaki woman's admission; she was appallingly bad at strategy games. The filthy rich billionaire was an opponent-adaptive fighter, meaning she could quickly adapt to the fighting style and abilities of her opponent but it would take longer to acclimatize herself in extremely unfamiliar battleground. If the topic of battle strategies came up in class, the Assistant Teacher would explain it instead of her. Though when it came to sparring and no holds barred fights-against one or multiple opponents-Kushina gladly taught what she knew, and she taught it well. Her students of four years could attest to that. The genjutsu mistress hugged her friend. "Thank you. And I hope you find that skin cream!"
"Fingers crossed!" Kushina said, leisurely jogging down the stairs.
Half an hour later, Kushina dropped two containers of cream before the cashier and the man behind the counter pushed up his glasses, saying. "That will be two thousand, five hundred and fifty ryu, Lady Uzumaki."
The woman rummaged through her pants pockets, as she picked out a pack of bubblegum from a small display stand close to the cashiers. "I'd also like to get this." She gave the man three one thousand ryu notes. "You can have the change." The man bowed in gratitude and neatly packaged her purchases, giving it to the radiant Kyuubi holder. "Thank you."
"Thank you, ma'am." He bowed again, this one a bit deeper than before. "Have a nice night."
"You too." She nodded, grabbing the small leather bag that had her cosmetic creams inside and opening the packet of bubblegum, tossing one into her mouth and stashing the rest in her pants pocket.
The doors of the supermarket slid open for her and she exited, chewing on her bubblegum and appreciating the cool breeze that rolled through the Market District, inhaling deeply and closing her eyes as she walked. Her trek took her some distance into the village, savouring the atmosphere and the relative silence of the village. There were lights coming from buildings and some people walked the street lamp lit road but there was a distinct lack of lustre in the details of the village.
Her forehead creased and she frowned.
Suddenly, Kushina bent down and rolled backwards, a split second before the a hand just nearly grabbed the back of her neck, righting herself agilely though her knees were bent and her hands were raised defensively, the fortress-like image was broken by the store bag in her right hand and the pop of the bubblegum in her mouth as she gnashed her teeth.
Her attacker put some distance between them, hopping backwards when he realized that his ambush hadn't worked on the Kyuubi jinchuriki, a high sensor of negative emotions, a woman with powerful natural senses and someone that had been taught to discern chakra signatures, though only at close range; the person was in a black cloak with red cloud designs on it and an spiral orange mask that only had one eyehole for the right eye. His hands were at his sides as he surveyed the defensively standing Uzumaki.
Kushina's eyes widened.
" Kami…" she muttered, startled. "Obito…is that you…?"
His chakra signature couldn't be mistaken for anyone else.
Sure, there was Mukoton chakra laced through the signature she was sensing, but Kushina knew she wasn't wrong.
The person that had ambushed her was a member of the now defunct Team Namikaze, of whom the only living member was Kakashi Hatake. Team Namikaze used to be a group of three genin Minato had been assigned to mentor when he was seventeen, comprising of Kakashi Hatake, Rin Noharu and Obito Uchiha. It was the beginning of the end for them when Obito had been crushed by a large rock and Rin lost her life by Kakashi's hand in order to prevent her from releasing the Three Tailed Turtle in the village.
Kushina didn't know them very much, even though she had been dating Minato for a while, because she too was a valuable asset for Konoha during the war. The few times they met were on a few lower class missions.
Kushina's face shifted with bewilderment. "You're alive?"
Kakashi had reported him dead and had been unable to recover Obito's body because of a landslide, as well as a stampede of Stone country shinobi chasing him and Rin.
Suspiciously enough, that same excuse sounded similar to what Minato kept telling the village about Blue's defection.
She shook her head, throwing that thought from her mind.
Now wasn't the time.
…Maybe later.
"No hard feelings, Kushina." Obito said slowly. "I need the Kyuubi to come out."
"Listen kid…I don't want to hurt you." Kushina warned, moving her arms down to guard under her chest, smoothly transitioning from defensive to counterattack with the backwards shuffle of her right foot. She visibly put a cap on her infuriated self when Obito said he intended to unseal the Kyuubi in Konoha, while they were dangerously close to the centre of the village. "Let's both just talk about this-"
"Maybe that's why you became a teacher." The spiral masked man said. "All you ever did was talk and talk and talk but never did anything, and now," he motioned to her with a brief wrist motion. "You made it your job."
Those few missions Kushina had been with Team Namikaze were strictly not combat missions. She was meant to supervise while Minato and the three-man-cell did most of the work; for her, it was a sort of vacation from the war in the war.
"Who'd have thought the great Uzumaki Kushina would walk away from the field and become a teacher." he shook his head at the absurdity, cocking his head to the side. "Anyway…with or without your permission," the orange masked man shrugged, bringing out a pair of short scythes from his wide sleeves and those two weapons connected to each other by a long chain, which dragged on ground. "It's going to happen."
"You think so, huh." She grasped the bag of skin cream in her hands and her knuckles popped, just a sliver of her anger showing as her purple eyes darkened and her shoulders loosened, relaxing for her body to move about in her clans lost fighting style.
She clapped her hands into the Ram seal.
"Kai!"
The illusion Obito had thrown on Kushina shattered like stained glass and they were in the sparse woods of Konoha's southern forest, deep in the thickets that bordered a few towns close to the edge of the continent. The grasses on the forest floor were very low and the lights from Konoha provided only limited visibility, adding to the light from the town behind Kushina and the starry night sky.
Kushina could see, if just barely.
The woman swept aside from a slash that intended to cut off her right arm, slipped under another slice that would have slit open her throat and twisted around on her heels underneath the chain as it made to wrap around the neck he had failed to cut. Her tracksuit rustled with the large movement and the wind whistling through the trees and shrubs intensified ever so slightly, blowing about her red hair but it didn't block her steely eyes as she dug a blow on Obito's back, as he was about to turn.
Her eyes bugged out when her fist passed through his back and the momentum of the blow threw her forward. She tucked into a roll, aptly using her forward momentum to put some space between him and her attacker.
Kushina righted herself and she clenched her teeth, tightening her fists. 'He's not a ghost, Kushina. There's no such thing as ghosts.' She used her palms to slap down Obito's three bicycle kicks, gathering her hands together and thrusting a fist into the Uchiha's chest, doing so with the bag of skin cream in her right hand, but it was blocked by his short scythes. Her foot rushed forward but it passed through his gut, though this time she tumbled with the motion and golden chains exploded from her back.
The orange masked man just barely skidded to the side, sustaining shallow cuts to his side.
His sole sharingan whirled maddeningly and Kushina smirked, hard, crouched low on the ground with the fingers of her right hand grazing the grass of the forest and the other held the leather bag of skin cream, having ten more celestial chains join the first one. 'It's just some trippy Uchiha jutsu.' The back of her tracksuit was in tatters and her black T-shirt looked to have taken some damage from summoning those golden chains, but it didn't look like the long sleeved mesh under armour had torn much. The redhead wasn't thinking of that though, her purple eyes sparked as she saw a few drops of blood fall throb through his black and red cloak. She also smelt his apprehension at her adapting to his intangibility after experiencing it only once. 'I've seen worse.'
Kushina wasn't a genius, or a prodigy for that matter.
Being a Kunoichi of Konohagakure no Sato, now retired, she either had to adapt on her feet or die a shameful death.
She certainly wouldn't be alive now just because of the Kyuubi; it was even said that the woman hardly ever used the power of the beast sealed in her gut.
Obito snarled under his mask.
He had grown tired of waiting for Kushina to get fragile. His hope of her getting pregnant for Minato, thus weakening the seal and her hold on the beast, was dashed when the divorce was finalized.
He didn't hold a grudge on the Uzumaki woman. His resentment was on Konoha and letting the Nine Tails loose would either destroy or at least weaken the village until he delivered the final blow at his earliest convenience, but it was he finding it hard to not get annoyed at the woman, not when she carefully looked at the centre of his chest-wisely avoiding his eyes-with that infuriatingly smug yet focused expression.
This right here was why he had held back from attacking her until now.
He hadn't underestimated her.
He only assumed the brash nature she had in her younger days would make her less careful.
He had the Mukoton and it would deal a great deal of damage if he unleashed it all in the centre of the village, but that sort of destruction was too little in comparison to a Kyuubi attack. His Mukoton wasn't nearly as powerful as Hashirama Senju's.
Obito mildly suspected that Kushina also wouldn't use any destructive jutsus.
His plan was in jeopardy by his own rashness, the same one he hoped Kushina still bore.
The one eyed man breathed out, cooling himself down. "Where are your swords, Kushina?"
The woman raised an eyebrow, still in her tiger-like crouched position. "So I can cut off your legs faster?" she shook her head negatively. The golden chains swayed hypnotically and she beamed, showing her sharp canines. "You'll just have to make do with what you see."
Kushina's variation of the Falling Whirlpool fist, the lost fighting style of the Uzumaki clan, was a lot more impatient than it should have been if it was practiced by a typical user. The Falling Whirlpool weaponized the opponent's impatience at the highly defensive and counterattacking prowess of the user, and in a way that was how she fought, but Kushina's alteration to the missing fighting style merged her impatient attitude and utilized sharp offensive strikes from her fists and feet when the opponent was too slow or wary to attacking.
Like now.
The Kyuubi holder pressed her fingers into the ground and launched forward, pelting dangerously with her head lowered and her arms flying behind her.
Obito's braced himself as a fist shot to his chest, making himself intangible, but his eye widened when she withdrew that fist an inch before it could clang against his scythes, and drove her other fist into his jaw.
Crack!
The man's head snapped to the side and his sharingan eye bugged out as he spat out blood inside his mask. The cobwebs fell away as quickly as the fist had left its mark on his jaw, fast enough to make himself untouchable once again before a kick could strike his shoulder. The foot passed through his torso but she whipped back around with another one, savagely striking the side of his scythe as he used it to block the side of his head, spinning on her foot and doggedly following his backtracking steps with three more revolving overhead kicks, coming at him in quick succession. She held back from a fourth, stepping back as she accurately predicted him activating his intangibility.
Her feet flattened on the ground and she tunnelled a blow to his chin, yanking her back a centimetre before it connected, surging another forward and pulling that one back as well, successfully hiding the forward kick that he managed to block with his scythes.
Bam!
A thud sounded, reverberating through the Uchiha man's body and shooting down into the earth, forming a shallow depression and pushing gales of wind against the trees around them.
The man's sharingan spun blazingly when he realized that the woman had discovered his pattern; when he activated intangibility, his guard invisibly reduced and her careful eyes spotted when he wasn't so focused on defending himself, attacking when that ability flickered off.
Age didn't mean strength in shinobi lingo, it meant experience.
Kushina was five years Obito's senior and she had fought, sparred and battled against her own fair share of Uchiha men and women, adding to her skill repertoire with each success and failure, bettering herself. He hadn't exactly been idle either; he was the one that massacred the Kiri shinobi that had come to retrieve Rin's body, and a few other minor things, but the woman was a visible collection of years and experiences.
His eye evolved to Mangekyo, elevating his ocular perception, and he summarily sidestepped a punch to his gut and wound the chains connecting his short scythes around the offending arm, violently jerking upwards and retaliating with a knee to Kushina's chin.
Thud!
What feeling of accomplishment vacated him when he realized that he hadn't connected with her chin but with the hand holding the leather bag of creams, reducing the items in the bag into a soupy mess.
Kushina's purple eyes saw red. "NO!"
The monstrous muscles of the chained arm pounded and the redhead roared vengefully.
"THESE WERE THE LAST TWO, ASSHOLE!"
Her fingers of the chained arm brushed against his cloak, a moment before it passed through. Predictably, she retracted her hand before she could fall into his inexistence and he forced fire affinity chakra into the chains of his scythes, turning the metal red hot and blistering, though his one Mangekyo noticed something when Kushina graced him with a vexed grin and a deadly throb on her forehead.
A golden chain from her left heel, as thin as ninja wire and shorter than his index finger, was scribbling on the grassy forest floor, drawing a seal with her palpable Uzumaki chakra like ink on paper for when for normal people it was nearly impossible to manifest chakra in such a way.
"Chakra Absorption Cage!"
Kushina's golden chains blasted out of the ground behind him, provoking him to instinctively hop forward away from them and the woman used the red hot chains wrapped around her arm to pull him in, skipping back a step in turn, trapping him in the absorption cage she had crafted with her chakra.
"Seal!"
The orange masked man looked down at the seal and grated, feeling his chakra traitorously leech from his pores by the second. "Amaterasu."
The flames burnt all five layers of the Chakra Absorption Seal in time for him to hop backwards. Kushina crossed her arms in front of her face, cringing away from the black fires that roared as hot as the sun, and squinting her eyes annoyingly at the red hot chains still wound around her arm, searing off the sleeve of her tracksuit.
The chains rankled and she was hurled into the black flames by her arm. She held her forearm before her face, the one not restrained by the chains of Obito's dual scythes, and a few golden chains drew on that forearm.
"Fire Sealing Method." The eternal black flames swept into her forearm, drawing in by a vacuum of air that sucked it in noisily, and when most of the fire was gone, she bared her teeth and twisted her chained arm, winding around and grabbing hold of the infuriatingly hot chain. Her feet fastened to the ground with chakra, negating his earlier pull, and her free hand threw the leather bag of destroyed creams at Obito.
They harmlessly sailed through him.
But his mind and his Mangekyo berated him for his action, as the woman slinked her arm out of the chained restraint, fell down on her hands and knees and barked. "Uzumaki Chakra Chains."
It wasn't golden chains that ripped out of the earth but ones that were ethereally blue, wrapping around his legs at rapid pace and dragging the surprised man into the earth till he was at waist height.
" Gah!" he exclaimed, finding his arms trapped at his sides and feeling chills runs down his spine at the sight of th woman crouched some feet from him, her body lowered like a feral beast, her left hand on the ground and her right hand clenched, cocked as if to punch him from her relatively far distance.
Her face was different, horrifying shades of enraged.
Her teeth gnashed and her canines snapped.
Her purple eyes became electric.
Kushina's right fist popped.
She reached in one good, hard bound and her merciless right fist met his head.
His lower body was rooted to the ground but the masked Uchiha blinked out of the earth in a blinding white flash, one that alarmed the denizens of Konoha and the towns within a hundred mile radius. He crashed through the trees and rolled limply on the ground. His back smacked into a tree and he sealed his scythes; they weren't of much use now anyway.
Kushina was where she had punched him out of the ground, her straight red hair parted into nine tails and swaying in the slight wind. Her grey and red tracksuit jacket was barely hanging from her shoulders, the black T-shirt underneath had somehow cut from her midriff, showing her solid abdomen, though the mesh armour she wore managed to stay mostly intact. Her tracksuit pants only bore a few dark burns but it wasn't crumbling at the seams like her coat.
His Mangekyo saw the blue chains were still around his legs and the Uzumaki woman pulled her left fist back, forcefully dragging him into the earth like the masked Uchiha was a victim of shark attack.
Not missing a beat, Obito became intangible, releasing himself from the chains, and he ran through the ground with Earth release: Underground Cave Subterfuge, which was just a jutsu that allowed him run through the ground.
Kushina's Negative Emotion Senses kept track of him until he was under her.
"Earth release: Double Suicide Decapitation technique." His attempt at switching places with the Kyuubi jinchuriki was half-successful, though the person whose head stuck out of the ground he was looking at was a Shadow clone. The real one fell down from the sky, as if she had dropped down from the heavens, with her fingers laced together for an axe blow.
The orange masked man dropped into a backwards roll, dodging the monstrously strong attack. The clone was unfortunate; its head blasted open and the ground groaned painfully, reverberating in agony as trees uprooted from the ground. She whirled around with a snap kick, which he caught in his hands, and he twisted the foot, flipping her in the air and releasing the foot. Obito flashed through ten hand seals.
"Water Prison technique!"
Water poured out from a Storage seal on the mouth of his mask, swirling hastily into a bubble that caught the woman in mid-air, trapping her.
"Got you-"
Kushina had to hand it to the Uchiha man; that jutsu was immensely difficult to perform anywhere there wasn't an abundant source of water but he had managed to plan ahead and store a large amount of water on his person. That jutsu would have worked if he was either physically stronger or had more chakra than her, any one of the two would have been enough and if he was equal with her on both that too would have done it for Kushina.
But he wasn't either.
Not to her.
The woman gathered her chakra into her core and release it all at once, blasting free of the inescapable bubble of water. The move would have sooner killed anyone else but Kushina was an Uzumaki jinchuriki; she had some chakra to spare.
The orange masked assailant stood fast to the ground with his chakra and he grabbed her by the scruff of her neck, she did so to him as well.
" Ack!" he gasped as her hand circled his throat and squeezed.
He was out of time.
"Watch your back, Kushina." He swore quietly and melted from her grasp, falling back into an invisible vortex of nothingness a split second before her golden chains could snag him, at the same time Konoha ANBU dropped down around Kushina.
Dog came up to her. "What happened?"
The chakra chains withdrew into Kushina's back and she dusted off her shoulders, grunting with displeasure as she removed her shredded tracksuit coat, not too pleased either that her black T-shirt was torn either. She pulled at the ends of her long sleeved mesh shirt under the T-shirt, feeling goosebumps creep up her arm as the breeze licked the exposed skin. They all watched as the burn marks on her right arm healed rapidly. Dog snapped his fingers in her face, yanking her out of her irritated thoughts. "It was Obito."
"O-Obito?" ANBU Captain Dog whispered shakily, flicking his head around to his subordinates and flagging for them to head back to their posts. "Are you sure?"
"Yes." She threw her damaged coat over her shoulder and walked away, saying. "Tell Minato that Obito wanted to unseal the Kyuubi."
Blue was right to think Kushina could take care of herself.
More than that, he was right to not block Obito from attacking in the first place because now, the whole village would discard him from their thoughts.
Obito Uchiha was the perfect distraction.
A single milky eyed crow restfully balanced on a broken yet slanted piece of the forest floor opened its wings and flew away.
Thousands of miles away in Hidden Saltwater, standing in a back alley that was blacked out from the open street by shadows and his deathly presence, Blue blinked.
He smirked.
" Damn."
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
08:26PM
Hidden Saltwater
The Village Hidden on Saltwater was a massive piece of land that floated on an equally large body of water, identifiably saltwater.
There were carnivals, festivals and celebrations frequently going on in the village, making the village a popular tourist destination for people of the continent, no matter the time or season. There were carousels, Ferris wheels, fireworks, zoos, rollercoasters, theatres where actors and actresses, as well as puppetmasters, could entertain audiences.
Overall, there was always something enjoyable, relatively family friendly and entertaining for all ages and all genders happening in Hidden Saltwater, but one couldn't say that the place was constantly awake like Zyouki, the gambling hub of the continent, as there were residential buildings, hotels, motels and guest inns dotted around that provided respite and silence for its guests, away from the fun lights and laughter of the town. Sometimes even Demon country monks visit Saltwater's famous hills to mediate.
Just like with the pockets of peace and quiet, people didn't only make a living leaning into the pomp and glamour of the eternal festivities; restaurants, cafes, book stores, schools and nurseries and the like. Normal, everyday people resided in Saltwater, that is people that either had lived in Saltwater for generations, and they habitually welcomed guests into the village. In-between the carnivals and festivals was a partial din for residents to collect their thoughts in preparation for the next festival.
Ten bridges connecting the village to the outside world provided a gateway for outsiders into Saltwater. It was a ten day ride on carriage from Konoha, seeing as it was an island floating on a body of saltwater, wedged between Waterfall and Iron country.
A majority of the village's revenue came from tourism, though this didn't mean Saltwater had no remarkable shinobi. It was that being a tourism hot spot, future clients assumed Saltwater shinobi were weak, so no mission requests arrived in the village all the time. The reality was that Saltwater ninjas had repelled two incursions from Iwa and Grass country but fell to Snow country for a few years until they pushed Snow out of their village with the help of Sunagakure.
It would explain why diplomatic relations between Saltwater and Suna was at a perpetual high.
Tourism had made Saltwater self-sustainably wealthy for the residents and for the visitors and being a tourism spot, outsiders came by to spend their vacations, often renting out vacation homes.
Most people saw it as a dream to own a vacation house in Saltwater.
On the western side of the village was a store called Manga Emporium for Geeks, Nerds and Dorks.
Yugito Nii tucked a strand of her short bleach blonde hair behind her ear and peered up at the large, unabashed signboard for the comic book store. The twenty five year old Kumo jounin was in a short sleeved white crop top that was one size too big for her, a long sleeved forest green shirt underneath and tight jeans that had been rolled up above her ankle to her mid-calf and black converse with blue designs at the front. She wasn't wearing her village's forehead protector and her weapons were all sealed into two Storage seals on her body-on her lower back and on her right elbow.
She entered the store and her feet took her over to the New Release section. She placed a fist on her hip and tilted forward, using the pointer finger of her other hand to glide over the manga titles released that week. The New Release section was just a stone throw from the Reading Lounge of the store and a quick flick of her eyes to that place forced a low grunt from her throat when the readers glanced over their comics at her, blushing red that a stellar beauty like her was gracing their humble manga establishment for the second time that week; she had arrived in Saltwater some days ago to spend her mandated leave from active duty by order of the Raikage.
Yugito had a kind of mysterious beauty, an attractiveness that had people wonder what went on in her head at all times, an astounding amount of power that majorly didn't come from the two tailed cat beast in her gut, a magnificent figure that made people weak at the knees and she particularly liked how powerless men were to her seduction.
She loved the way men and women alike turned and ogled her as she passed by them.
It didn't seem to be enough for him though.
Yugito frowned invisibly when that thought process slipped into her mind.
He had acknowledged that she was the very definition of a bombshell blonde but in the months he had used to convince her to become his contact within Kumo's higher ranks and the subsequent years of getting to know each other, in passing or if they managed to sneak away from their respective camps to meet in the dead of night, he never made a move on her, even though she was a hundred and one percent sure he had nailed a good majority of the women he came across on his travels.
Blue wasn't lacking in confidence.
Not one bit.
Those night times, under the cover of the stars and illuminated by the midnight moon, they would creep away from detection and come together in the shade of a tree, under the guise of collecting Intel to aid Konoha in the war, though their conversations more often than not branched off into personal matters.
He even had the gall to not respond to her offer of entering a 'couple-like relationship'.
Her!
Yugito Nii!
Sexiest Kunoichi of all time!
" Pah!" she scoffed, standing up when she didn't find the new release she was looking for, even though she had gotten a newsletter that evening that her favourite manga had release a new chapter.
That didn't matter now though, as she was more preoccupied frowning to herself, her eyebrows dipped into a glare at the New Release stand and suppressing her hot breaths.
In her heart, she knew Blue still liked Uzumaki Kushina, Kyuubi Jinchuriki of Konoha, but Yugito was confident she could sway Blue to her side with a bit more time.
Just…a bit more time.
Just a little.
Yugito shook her head when she felt the prickle of tears come to her eyes, rubbing them with her fingers and ignoring the heart-eyed gazes from the nerds and geeks relaxing in the Reading Lounge.
Was it because of the love of the game and chasing her prey that she ended up liking Naruto?
Heck if she knew.
You never know what you have until you lose it…or so they say.
Naruto was a nice person; it was a pleasant change to not have someone look at her like a doll or treat her like a fragile princess.
Hanging out with him, those nights, was… nice.
She could have made him like her back.
She could have.
Yugito heard a rustle of clothing behind her and she hastily dabbed at the corners of her eyes with a handkerchief she whipped out of the back pocket of her jeans. She cleared her throat and looked over her shoulder, jumping when the person was facing the other side, perusing a stand for manga in the sci-fi genre, humming a quiet tune and keeping particular notice on a comic book from a new author about an inventor of weapons of mass destruction.
The jinchuriki of the Nibi no Nekomata noticed the light-absorbing midnight black cloak the person was wearing and his shaggy black hair falling down to the nape of his neck, though she quickly returned her eyes to the New Release stand when the person perked up, glancing over his shoulder.
"I used to know someone that loved sci-fi manga. He never shut up about it." She idly commented in a silent whisper, sniffing and dabbing the corners of her eyes. She flashed a reminiscent smile, recalling how she and Blue would lie on the grass, staring at the sky and the elaborate ways he described the things he wanted to invent in the near future, as soon as the war ended and he had time on his hands. Her face dropped but her smile didn't reduce. "He was a nerd."
The tall, cloaked man paused in his humming song, fractionally looking over his shoulder.
"…I don't have a thing for nerds…but I had a thing for that nerd."
"Had?"
"I…don't know where he is…" she whispered, turning around and fully facing the dark man running his fingers through the sci-fi manga stand. "He just disappeared." Her eyes lit up. "If he was here though-"
"This is going to sound random… but…" the man still hadn't turned to look at her and his tall profile very nearly towered over her. "Want to talk about it over dinner?"
Yugito glared at the man's back and placed her hands on her hips, hissing nastily. "Yeah, then you can explain where the fuck you've been, Naruto."
Blue chuckled at her irate tone and he turned around smoothly. Her incensed countenance slipped down at the sight of the bandages around his eyes, though her eyes lit up again with fiery anger at the secretive smile behind his high collar cloak. "So…you're pissed."
The woman threw her hands in the air and shouted. "Hell yeah I'm pissed!"
Blue used his body to block Yugito from sight of the growingly concerned people of the Lounge, successfully hiding his face as well. The front of his cloak opened and his red gloved hands came out, gently grabbing hold of her own and bringing them down to their stomach level, looking deep into her eyes and showing his remorse for his absence in spite of the bandages and the bang covering the right side of his face.
Oddly enough, even as Yugito was enraptured by the eyeless contact and the rage melted from her pores in tremendous waves, she noticed how there was absolutely nothing inside the cloak, his dark clothing aside, it looked and felt like all life and hope diverged into his deathly black cloak, except for the bubble of warmth surrounding him and the person she liked.
She teetered, visibly struggling to stay mad at him; her face shifted from angry to resigned, then angry and then even more resigned, until her shoulders slumped after two short minutes of complete silence.
She slowly held his hands back and she exhaled heavily, her eyes at their feet and unconsciously disregarding how close they were standing to each other.
Blue's bandage covered blind eyes saddened and he said lowly, his voice rolling through her in agonizing waves. "I take full responsibility. I messed up not letting you know right away."
Yugito's cheeks puffed out, pouting shyly, downright forgetting to be her normal cocky self. "You did."
A lot of people were miserable.
Naruto didn't like people being sad because of him.
But…
When it came to payback, Blue had tunnel vision.
"I made you sad and I'm sorry." He apologized sincerely and even as she couldn't see his eyes, she knew he wasn't lying. "I'm sorry, Yugito."
She grumbled under her breath, powerless and not exactly hating why she was so helpless, even though he was just holding her hands. " Mnnn…I won't forgive you so easily, Naruto."
The blue Uchiha's pale face brightened. "Can we still have that dinner?"
"How about at my place?" Yugito responded eagerly, grasping Blue's hand and guiding him out of the comic book store with a giddy bounce in her step and biting her bottom lip. "I learnt how to cook curry and rice some time ago. You have got to try it."
The cloaked Master of Crows thrummed pleasantly. "Looking forward to it, Yugito."
Leaving the building of disillusioned comic book readers, Yugito sidled up to the side, hooking her elbow around his and hugging his arm tightly, almost looking like she was afraid that the man she was grasping so fervently would mercilessly fall apart into air, irreversibly breaking her heart.
This time, she wasn't going to lose him.
They had to pass the very edge of the main town, where Yukata wearing people gaily walked about, carrying sparklers and waving them into the sky with celebratory shouts as fireworks whizzed into the air.
Bang! Ba-Bang! Bang-Bang!
Oooooooh!...Ahhhhhhh!
The crowds weren't too many but they spoke animatedly, so no one took particular notice of the ominously dressed midnight of a man or the eagerly beaming bleach blonde Nibi jinchuriki.
Blue's shoulder bumped into someone.
"Hey! Watch where you're going, brat!"
"Uh huh." He grunted to the man's shout, keeping his ear on the Kumo lady's excited chatter about how she makes her curry.
"I said," a sweaty hand grabbed Blues shoulder and the Uchiha man stopped. "Watch it, ya brat!"
Blue 'looked' at the hand on his shoulder and Yugito's smile slowly went down as she saw the look in the offended man's eyes.
A firework popped above head with a resounding Bang!
Some children ran past them with sparklers, giggling without a care in the world.
The white haired man took his hand off Naruto's shoulder, his brow furrowed in thought. "Hey…do I know you from somewhere…?" he might have been beaten within an inch of his life by a gang of women behind a hot spring and thrown into a trashcan just some minutes ago, but he had enough wherewithal to recognize faces. "I do know you."
The blue Uchiha sighed. "You should have kept on walking, old man."
Yugito heaved out a breath, suddenly disappointed but unrelenting on holding Naruto's left arm hostage. "There goes our dinner."
Blue's gloved right hand snapped out of the darkness of his partially open cloak, grabbing the man by his face before he could exclaim in alarm. The blind Uchiha smiled easily, cocking his head to the side. "Let's take this somewhere else, Jiraiya."
Naruto pushed and Jiraiya of the Sannin took flight.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Pale lavender eyes blankly watched the Toad Sage hurtle through the sky from her place in the moon.
From a young age, the blue one had piqued her interest.
A whisper of a smile graced her luminous face, unaging after so many centuries and undying despite being long forgotten.
The Master of Crows will reshape the world.
For better or for worse, in his hellish image or into a heavenly realm; even her godly byakugan eyes could not see that far.
The Rabbit goddess and the Princess of the Otsutsuki clan placed a dainty hand on her cheek, breathing out and beauteously closed her eyes, the ghostly smile in place on her regal face.
"…Blue…"
Her grand entrance would be glorious .
Authors note
Character Ages
Naruto – 25
Kakashi, Obito, Yugito, Yugao, Asuma and a some others – 25
Kushina, Minato, Clan heads – 30
Orochimaru, Jiraiya and Tsunade – 42
Itachi, Izumi and Shisui - 12
Clan heirs (minus Itachi) – 4
Hopefully I didn't forget anyone important.
Done
That's that about that.
Hiruzen Sarutobi may or may not make an appearance in the next chapter. We'll have to see.
We've also got a fight coming in the next chapter, and I'm fuggin excited to put it down :D
Ya'll ready?
Drop a review, would you so kindly. Please stay safe, wherever you are in the world. Please.
See you when I see.
Foy.