Chapter 3: Fireflies
It was high summer—hot, muggy, and miserable. Three months had passed since Minato's "date" with Uzumaki-san and—aside from the occasional fleeting glimpse of red hair—he hadn't seen her or heard from her since. He could almost forget that she was in the village.
For a while, his friends pestered him about his date, but he managed to avoid telling them any details about what had happened. His sensei kept his secret for him, though he probably did that to avoid admitting how "lame" his student was with entertaining women. And it seemed that Uzumaki-san wasn't running around bragging about how she ripped a free lunch off him; Minato hadn't even heard a whisper of a rumor about what went down at the ramen stand.
In the time since Uzumaki-san's unexpected return, other survivors of Uzu (Whirlpool) had trickled into Konoha. Minato hadn't really met any of them, but he'd heard about them from his sensei. Some stayed only long enough to recover from injuries and then left again, hungry for vengeance, but the majority stayed on, willing to serve Konoha for lack of anything else to do.
Konoha wasn't officially at war with Iwa. Not yet. But with how Iwa kept getting into little skirmishes with Konoha-nin, it was inevitable. Iwa was riding high from its defeat of Uzu and was hungry for more victory on a bigger target. Full war might not start tomorrow, but it would start soon.
To unwind from the rising tensions, Minato's friends had set up a little party at a bar under the pretext of welcoming some of the more friendly Uzu-nin to Konoha. Inoichi, with Inuzuka Isamu and his partner Katsumaru, had forcibly redeemed Minato's "rain check" so he had little choice but to attend. No important mission had come up to save him from the party, and so he found himself in the bar that he'd dodged months earlier, surrounded by other shinobi.
Aside from Inoichi, Choza, Shikaku, and Isamu (Katsumaru was curled up under the table), the rest of the party included Uchiha Fugaku, Hyuuga Hizashi (his identical twin Hiashi was busy with clan business), and Shiranui Ichiro. Jiraiya was out on a mission, otherwise Minato was certain that he'd be present as well, despite the fact that he'd be one of the oldest at the collection of pushed-together tables. Minato found himself reluctantly tucked between Isamu and Inoichi, the loud, gregarious playboys.
Across from the clump of Konoha shinobi were a handful of Uzu shinobi. They were mostly jounin though Minato thought one of them might be a chuunin. Minato really hadn't caught their names, but he had been introduced to Arata, Hachiro, and Daichi. The rest of them were a mystery to him.
Minato reluctantly sipped at his shot of sake, grimacing at the burning sensation as the alcohol trickled down his throat. He didn't drink much; he despised the woozy sensation it gave him, it made him feel vulnerable. The smoky air of the bar added to Minato's discomfort.
Everyone else was having a good time. They drank and laughed and swapped raunchy stories. It was a little informal party. Minato wondered how long he had to wait until it was safe for him to sneak away.
"Hey!" one of the Uzu-nin, Daichi piped up during one of the brief lulls in conversation. "You look familiar." He pointed to Minato. "What's your name again?"
"Namikaze Minato," he replied warily.
The other man scratched at his little black goatee thoughtfully, then he smirked. "Oh yeah…you."
"Who is he, Daichi?" his friends asked curiously. "You know him?"
"I remember you from the exchange a few years back," Daichi smirked. "You're the guy who thought that Uzumaki-chan was a boy."
Minato flushed in embarrassment and barely resisted the urge to bang his head on the table. There's no way that I'm ever living that down, is there?
All the Uzu-nin exploded into hysterical laughter. Some of the Konoha-nin did too. But the rest were confused.
"Oh god, I remember that!" Isamu howled, slapping his knee. "That was so awesome! Didn't she break your nose?"
Minato ducked his head and growled out a sour, "Yes."
"What happened?" Hizashi asked curiously.
"Well, my team and I came to Konoha for the Genin Exchange a few years back," Daichi explained, taking it upon himself to relate the tale. "And one of my teammates, Uzumaki-chan, is this huge tomboy. When we came, she was all scrawny and little and looked a lot like a boy. And I guess Blondie here"—he smirked and nodded at Minato—"just figured that she was a boy, even though her name's Kushina. He even started calling her 'Uzumaki-kun'!"
That sent the Uzu-nin into snickering fits.
"At first she lets it slide. I mean, we all thought it was a joke. But then, just as we're leaving, she finally has it with him. He calls her 'Uzumaki-kun' one last time and she slugs him in the face! Then she corrects him and storms off!" Daichi cackled. "Oh you should've seen the look on his face!"
Minato buried his face in his hands. Oh, make it stop!
"That's pathetic, Namikaze," Fugaku snorted. "Confusing a girl for a boy."
"Can we not talk about this anymore?" Minato pleaded.
"No, no, let's talk about it some more!" Isamu clapped. "C'mon, tell us, what's the ragamuffin look like now?"
"Uzumaki-chan?" Daichi grinned. "What do you say boys? What's she look like now?"
"She's cute."
"She actually looks like a girl!"
"I think she's pretty enough."
"Dude, she's hot!"
"I wouldn't say 'hot,' but definitely pleasant to look at."
"Could you be more specific than 'she looks good'?" Inoichi asked. "Details, please."
"Alright." Arata took over the lead and settled back in his chair. "My dear classmate, Uzumaki-chan, is a lean red-head; long, long hair; blue-green eyes, wide and expressive; not terribly well endowed"—he made a vague gesture towards his chest—"but still nice enough to look at… Hm, what else?"
"Huh, that sounds kind of like that girl that picked you up a few months back," Inoichi remarked, eying Minato. "You know, that one you refuse to talk about."
"I thought I saw an Uzu hitae-ate on her arm," Choza added in-between bites of some snack that he was devouring.
The Uzu-nin, almost as one, leaned forward in intense interest.
"Oh, an Uzu-kunoichi you say?" Daichi almost purred.
"Did she have long red hair? With a little girl barrette-thing?" Hachiro added.
"Dude!" Arata grinned wolfishly at Minato. "Did you two go out?! For real?"
"That sounds like her, yeah," Inoichi nodded and jabbed Minato in the side with his elbow. "So is this why you won't mention your date? 'Cause it was with a girl that beat you up once? What, did she give you a black eye or something?"
Minato rubbed at his abused side and shrank into his chair. "Um…"
"Wait, wait, wait, you went out with Uzumaki?" Isamu sputtered.
"…Yeah," Minato muttered, staring fixedly down at the shot glass in his hand.
There was a sudden stretch of shocked silence.
"She actually agreed to go out with you?" Arata asked, stupefied.
Minato itched nervously at the back of his head. "Yes…"
"Oh my god, you're my hero!" Arata laughed. "You actually got her to go out with you? Wow! And here we all thought that she was a lesbian!"
"…Come again?" Minato choked.
"She's never gone out with any guy ever," Hachiro informed him. "And lots of guys have asked, ever since she turned fifteen. She turned them all down."
"She's never hit on a guy outside of a mission, never kissed a guy outside of a mission—nothing!" Arata shrugged. "Guys never seemed to be her thing, so it has to be girls. And it makes sense, too. She's this huge tomboy, so maybe—"
"Oh hey guys!" Uzumaki Kushina herself seemed to materialize out of nowhere right over Daichi's shoulder and glanced around with a cheery smile on her face. "Having a little party?"
"Hey, Uzumaki-chan!" Daichi waved. "Glad to see you made it out alright."
"Yeah, I managed," she shrugged and glanced around curiously. "What'cha talkin' about?"
"He was explaining to us his reasoning for why he thought you were a lesbian," Fugaku replied, gesturing towards Arata.
Her smile shifted slightly, like it was being forced, and Minato suddenly got a bad feeling. "Oh? You thought I was a lesbian?"
"Yeah," Arata nodded.
"Who else thought that?" she asked, glancing around at her Uzu colleagues.
They glanced at each other before raising their hands, some higher than others.
"I see," she nodded gravely to herself.
…And then she exploded.
She focused her wrath on Arata first, pummeling him in the head ("You stupid, horny perv! Just because I won't go out with you doesn't mean I'm into girls!"). Once he was thoroughly beaten, she expanded her rage to the other Uzu shinobi ("You bastards! I thought you were smarter than Arata-baka! What's the matter with you?!"). And then just before the bouncers were moving to eject her, she abruptly stopped her rampage and stormed out, terrified patrons darting out of her way like startled roaches.
"Wow…" Isamu breathed, peering out from under the table with Katsumaru. "I guess she's not a lesbian."
The muggy summer night did nothing to cool her raging temper. Kushina stormed through the forest around Konoha with no particular destination in mind. Her race through the trees was purely to bleed off energy and emotional overload. She could've just gone and killed someone, but outside of a mission or self-defense, that wasn't legal.
A lesbian?! she fumed. They think that I chase skirts like them?! Am I that much of a tomboy that they can't imagine me lusting after a man?!
Snarling, she upped her speed, pumping chakra into her legs until they ached, and pumping her legs until her lungs burned. Leaves and twigs slapped at her face and exposed skin, leaving stinging welts and the occasional bleeding cut, but she barely felt it. She was little more than a blur of red and black as she dashed ragged laps around the village.
Eventually her breath ran out and her chakra ran low and she failed to make a leap from one tree to the next. She splashed down in a small lake and floated on her back as she gasped for air. The cold water helped ease the burning inside and she closed her eyes and ceased to think for a while.
But bit by bit thoughts began to worm their way into her consciousness.
She thought about Uzu. How she'd never see it again, not as it was. All the people she'd never see again—her brothers, some of her classmates, her sensei, her neighbors. What were those Iwa jerks doing to her home? Why the hell had they wanted it in the first place?
Childhood memories drifted before her eyes. She remembered her gruff father, a good man who loved his sons but had no idea what to do with a daughter. She remembered her older brothers who had even less of an idea what to do with a sister. She remembered beating boys up at school, teasing girls for being worthless sissies, learning to throw kunai and shuriken and how to set traps with wires and exploding tags. She remembered how it always rained and the smell of the sea and her grandfather's stories and a ghostly lullaby that maybe her long-dead mother had sung to her as a child…
Kushina slowly opened her eyes and stared blankly up at the sky. The stars overhead were so tiny and distant and cold. The moon was barely a sliver in the sky. She sighed, almost choking on the humid air, and tears silently slipped from her eyes.
No one would come for her. It wasn't that they didn't care; it was that they thought that she didn't need it. She was Uzumaki Kushina, the tomboy, not a weepy, weak, pathetic girl. When she got mad or sad, she did what guys did: break something or hurt someone. She didn't cry…much, and certainly not in front of other people.
Tears were a sign of weakness. Tears were for girls. So what if she was a girl? She wasn't like them, she was different, special. Tears were not for her.
When the cold water ceased to be soothing and started to make her teeth chatter, Kushina stiffly lurched to her feet. Her chakra was low, but she had enough to comfortably stand on the surface of the lake for a while. Numbly she noted that her legs were going to get back at her the next day for her reckless, rage-fueled sprint.
Her long hair was soaked and felt heavy and it was hard to hold her head up. As she wrung it out, she glanced around with bleary eyes. Tiny winking lights, yellow-green-ish in color, caught her attention as they drifted along the banks of the lake and over the shallows of the water.
"Fireflies," she mumbled hoarsely. A bitter smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. "It always rained too much in Uzu for a lot of fireflies…"
She padded over to the shallows and stood there in her waterlogged clothes as the blinking insects drifted around her. The whole experience felt dream-like, almost soothing. For a moment she imagined that she was someone else; a girly daydream where she wasn't a tomboy, but just a girl who didn't have to be strong all the time, didn't have to push herself so hard, didn't have a care in the world.
I bet the boys wouldn't think I was a lesbian if I was just like other girls. I wonder if I'd even be friends with those guys… I'd probably hang out with other girls and do girly things like gossip and shop and play with hair. …How boring.
Closing her eyes, she shrugged aside that little daydream for another.
She thought of her little lunch-date with Namikaze. It had been a lot nicer than she'd expected. Not only did she get all the free food that she'd wanted, but it had been fun just hanging out with him and not fighting him or cussing at him. And it didn't hurt that he was nice to look at.
It's a pity that we can't just erase the past and start over fresh. I was such an awful brat to him back then… She sighed and cracked her eyelids open a little to watch the lazy dance of the fireflies. If I could do it all over again…I'd still sock him in the nose if he called me a boy.
There was a faint rustling sound off to the side as someone moved around nearby in the forest. She tensed for a moment, wary for any threat. There was a very low-scale war going on. But she sensed no killer intent, no spiking chakra, nothing threatening at all. There was even something familiar about the presence that she sensed, but she couldn't place it.
Whoever it was drew closer and closer until she was certain they had reached the edge of the lake near where she was standing. She felt eyes on her, but she ignored the watcher. She wasn't naked or crying or doing anything embarrassing so she wasn't bothered by any staring.
The feeling of chakra depletion, the hollow weariness, was starting to get stronger. Soon she wouldn't be able to support her weight on top of the water. So, reluctantly, she returned to dry land, but moved slowly enough so as not to disturb the fireflies that hung in the air around her.
She vaguely wondered how late it was and if the party was still going on or if her temper tantrum had dispersed it. Her clothes were still damp, but not as soaked as they had been, giving her the feeling that she'd been out on the lake for a lot longer than she thought. Idly she debated whether or not to head back to her quarters in the ninja barracks (AKA the tiny closet-sized apartments for lonely, single ninja).
Spinning in place, she came to a halt when her eyes finally landed on her watcher. It was Namikaze and he was staring at her with an odd expression on his face. It was something like a cross between someone who was dazed from a blow to the head and someone who was half-asleep. Maybe if she wasn't so spent from her rampage she might've been able to find something funny to say about his face.
"Hi," she half-smiled. "What brings you out here?"
He gave a guilty start at the sound of her voice. "Uh, U-Uzumaki-san, I—"
"You can use my first name if you want," she interrupted. "There'd be less chance of you messing up and adding the wrong honorific at the end."
"K-Kushina-san," he swallowed and paused to gather his scattered composure. "Are you alright?"
"Am I alright?" she repeated blankly.
"Earlier…the, uh, lesbian comment…you seemed…upset."
She wrinkled her nose. "Oh, that. Yeah, I'm alright. I just needed to blow off some steam. I'm fine now."
"Well, that's good…" He rubbed at the back of his head and then hesitantly walked over to stand next to her. "So…how have you been?"
"Aside from today, pretty good I guess." She held up her hand and let one of the fireflies land on her fingertip. "Konohagakure's a nice place. I like it here well enough. Though I wish wasn't so hot and sticky."
"It's summer," he shrugged.
"That explains everything, eh?" She blew the glowing bug off her hand and leaned against the nearest tree trunk. "What's it like in the winter? Does it snow?"
"Sometimes a little bit, if there's a strong enough cold snap. But usually it just rains a lot and is unpleasant."
She laughed a little, and it sounded a little hollow to her ear. "Sounds like fun, I can't wait."
Namikaze peered at her with some concern. "Are you sure that you're alright?"
"I'm just tired," she sighed. "I think I'll head back now."
Kushina pushed off the tree and started picking her way back towards the village. Her legs felt heavy and rubbery from the abuse she'd put them through and she hoped that she had enough steam to make it back to her bed. Before she could say good-bye to Namikaze, he moved to follow her.
"Have you pulled many missions since arriving?"
"Not as many as I'd like," she sighed. "But enough to get by so far. How about you?"
"I've been busy enough." He paused for a minute or two and then went on. "There's this advanced student that I've been tutoring. He graduated very early from the Academy and he really didn't fit in with the older graduates so he's not really on a team right now."
"A loner?" She frowned thoughtfully. "How's that working for him?"
"Alright I suppose," he shrugged though he looked worried. "The boy's a genius, he's made chuunin already and he isn't quite ten years old yet. At the rate that he's progressing, he'll be a jounin around the time that most kids graduate the Academy."
Kushina let out a low whistle. "Very, very impressive." She tilted her head curiously at him. "So why are you so worried about that?"
"Well, he's advanced so far beyond his peers that he has no friends. He was always the youngest in his class, and keeping him apart this way only makes it harder to get him to make friends." Namikaze frowned. "His attitude doesn't help any, either."
"His attitude?"
"He prefers working alone. Teamwork is his weakest area and he makes little effort to improve upon it. When he's put in a situation with a team where he must chose between protect his client or a teammate, he'll protect the client and leave his teammate to die."
She grimaced. "That's not good."
"No it's not." Namikaze shook his head. "No matter what I try to do to steer him in a better direction, he resists. I think it has something to do with his father's disgrace and suicide."
"Who is this kid?" Kushina asked curiously.
"His name is Hatake Kakashi," Namikaze replied. "His father was Hatake Sakumo, Konoha's White Fang."
Kushina picked at her damp sleeves. "I think I remember hearing something about the White Fang screwing up something bad, but…he killed himself?"
"Yeah, he did. And because of that, Kakashi is driven to train harder, hold himself aloof, and follow the rules." Namikaze made a sour face. "If he thinks you're breaking or skirting a rule from the shinobi handbook, he'll quote the rule to you."
"That's awful!" Kushina shuddered. "It's a good thing that you're his teacher and not me. I'd lose my patience with him and smack him in the head or something!"
Namikaze winced at that. "Um…"
She glanced around and found that they'd made it to the outskirts of the village. It was quite late; most buildings were dark and there were few people about. Kushina estimated how much further she had to go, sighed tiredly, and prayed that her flagging energy held out long enough.
Kushina pressed on in silence. She couldn't think of anything else to say and didn't feel like wasting her energy on talking. The silence didn't feel awkward or uncomfortable to her, so she let it be.
It was nice hanging out with Namikaze, she decided. In the months between now and the date she'd caught glimpses of him around the village or at the training grounds, but she'd always kept her distance for a variety of reasons. Maybe she ought to change her strategy a little…
The barracks building finally came into view and Kushina somehow managed to pick up the pace. Her crappy little bed was calling her name and she didn't want to keep it waiting. Namikaze matched her pace easily.
"Why are you following me?" she asked.
"I, uh, well…" He seemed to find the odd shadows cast by the streetlights fascinating. "I don't live too far from here and I thought that I'd keep you company."
"You didn't have to bother, but thanks." She tucked a loose strand of red hair behind her ear. "So did I totally crash your party back there, or what?"
"I guess," he shrugged. "I wasn't really into it much. Sitting around and getting drunk isn't my idea of fun."
"So…did I rescue you?" she asked, faintly amused at the thought.
"Yeah," he laughed. "I suppose you could look at it that way."
"Glad to be of service then." She paused at the front door of her building. "Goodnight"—a little wave—"I'll see you later."
He smiled a little and waved back. "Bye." Then he flickered away in a flash of yellow light.
"Cheater," she muttered under her breath and turned to make the long and painful trek up the three flights of stairs to her room. Tomorrow morning's gonna suck… But at least tonight wasn't quite as bad as I thought.
