So close to catching up now I can almost feel it.

Thank you faithful reader.

Lonski.

Chapter five.

Everything that's left behind.

The remains of the day faded away with the deluge of grey rain and black mud underfoot which washed away all hope of finding her. Keeping the trail which had led them to the edge of the Villages' boundaries towards... enemy territory.

"Damn..." Kushina shut her eyes as she tried to stop a stream of oily mud from running into her eyes and failed miserably. She wiped her hands on the ends of her long hair which clung wetly to her frame in a poor attempt to clean her hands. As she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand she spluttered in pain as more grit burned her eyes. "Damn..." She cursed again as she clawed her headband from her forehead and used that as a cloth and finally, the pain eased enough for her to blink her eyes open and wince at her surroundings. They were even darker then they had been before.

The young Shinobi lent against a tree and began, "Sh-" before a crackling voice burst into existence in her ear.

"Kushina-San?"

"What is it?" Kushina yelped with a mixture of hope and desperation.

"I'm afraid I must suggest that you return back to base, you have taken the time of two shifts. With poor conditions and lack of visibility, it would be best to allow a tracking team to take your place. You cannot stay there all night." It was Yamanaka; impartial as ever, he was right, Kushina could even hear his teammate Nara mutter his own agreement.

It stung like nothing else to admit that he was right. Kushina nodded slowly before she realised he could not see her agreement.

"Kushina-San?" He asked again, a tone of concern etched in his voice.

"Yeah. You're right. I'm just being... selfish." Sometimes she really hated having a division in her group whose knowledge of the behaviour of people allowed them to read everyone like books.

"Copy that. Over and out." The static hissed coldly in her ear for a moment before she managed to summon the energy to turn it off.

"She'll be fine, you know?" Hagane offered to her in a small voice. The boy had become ever more serious as time went on, he and Izumo had stayed out with her for the extra back to back shift. They looked exhausted and Kushina felt herself become colder as she berated herself again.

"Let's do what ol' ponytail says and get outta here," She perked, unable to reply to Hagane's statement.

With regret, she turned towards the Village and ran across the waterlogged forest floor, she was more accustomed to the terrain then the other two were and progress was slow as the team constantly had to stop to pick themselves up and bandage new cuts from brambles and branches with each fall with sodden bandages. Eventually the team reached the lip of a wide and alien clearing. With no sun or starlight, it was difficult to maintain the right direction, Kushina didn't recognise the land. She knew they were still in the boundaries of the village since it was after all names the Village Hidden in the Trees. She just didn't know where exactly.

A flash of silver seared her cheek and she wondered hazily if it was a shard of hail as her Shinobi instincts told her otherwise and she launched herself sideways to land in a skidding heap on the ground. Blood ran down her face as the blade of the Kunai had torn the many intricate capillaries under her skin. It stung but it worked in her favour, it brought her out of her mind and onto the battlefield before her.

"Scatter!" She yelled at the other two, the boys instantly disappeared in the tree line behind.

Kushina ran forward towards where she guessed where the enemy were, it was the best manoeuvre she could think of to do that took the brunt of the attacks away from the weakened boys. Two shadowy figures materialized at either side of her and it looked like a Genjuitsu illusion but she couldn't be sure in the heavy rain. She parried the attack from the one to her left with her own Kunai and almost instantly blocked the second Shinobi's attack from behind with a kick to his arm when he thought she hadn't seen. She dropped a smoke bomb from her belt and flung it to the ground while they were still dazed and although it would not work well under the poor conditions, which gave her enough time to throw down a more conspicuous exploding charm tagged to a kunai.

Kushina leapt backwards and back to where the boys should be in the trees and hissed, "Stay close to-"

"You to prevent them taking us out one by one - " Izumo quipped back to her as he slid to stand by her.

"Jez, forgot you trained us so well in your old age Sensei?" A spark of normality shot between them and she smiled as she regarded the enemies.

"You just wait you little brat, when we're done you're gonna die by my –"

"Earth Style – Mighty fist!"

Kushina yelped with surprise as she glared at the enemy, "That was my line baldie!"

A perfectly formed fist made entirely of solid rocked hurtled towards them, she had no time left to simply stare at is and she slapped her hands together and exclaimed, "Water Style: Barricade!" and from around Kushina, a rush of ice-cold clear water shot forth and grasped the fist with a resounding crash.

Without the need for orders, Hagane ran around the clashing techniques and yelled as he pulled a long scroll from his vest, "Ninja scroll technique: Metallic rain!" The Earth element attack floundered beneath the force of both attacks and the Shinobi released it as he raised his hands to protect himself from the onslaught of various small weapons from the scroll. Screams could be heard from the second Shinobi as Hagane's attack managed to get him in range.

Unable to maintain the technique for much longer, Kushina cancelled her own juitsu and scored the surroundings for it was unusual for there only to be a team of two-

"Earth style: Flaming Darts!"

Three blazing shards of rock hissed through the rain towards them, Hagane was the nearest to the attack and he had managed to summon his Katana in time to block one with a painful ding to the blade. The smouldering rock embedded itself in the ground beside where the boy stood and extinguished just as Kushina dodged her own with a duck and dashed towards Izumo who had been half way through a Juitsu and threw a Kunai at it when she was in range. The rock exploded into dust just as Izumo belted,

"Water release: Syrup Capture Field."

It was his newest technique; Kushina spun to look for something he had obviously seen and see the two fallen Ninja crumble into useless piles of dirt and for the real Shinobi to explode in a cloud of smoke from where the darts had been. They instantly circled in on her but miraculously one of the Shinobi had slipped on Izumo's technique and had gotten stuck in the thick sludge as it gathered around his ankles. With the other two unfortunately, she hadn't been so lucky.

"Earth release: Bedrock Coffin!"

Two slabs of heavy rock more then three meters in diameter zoomed towards her from either side. There was no way she could out run them, especially since she had now gotten stuck in Izumo's own Juitsu. Thinking on her feet in her lest few seconds she yelled,

"Shadow clone Juitsu!"

Three doppelgangers appeared around her from clouds of white smoke, two instantly took the task of trying to slow the incoming slabs with the pressure of summoned water from their mouths. While the third shoved Kushina as hard as it could away from the attack just as it closed in on the three clones and ended their lives.

"Sorry Sensei!" Izumo called from behind her as he presumably grappled with the trapped Shinobi. She ignored him and honed in on one of the two free enemies.

"Where is she?" Kushina yelled as her hair whipped around her face in thick bands full of mud and it mixed painfully with her cheek.

The Bald man's lips curled in a greasy smile and sneered, "Wouldn't you like to know missy." His head gear said he was from the Rock country but she had assumed as much from their attack style.

"I swear if you don't now, that will be the last thing you ever say!"

The man mock gasped at her as he bore down on her, "Really? I guess I just broke your promise to me!"

Kushina hissed back to him, "Your funeral pal."

She formed the same tiger seal from before and five more clones of herself appeared around the much taller Shinobi, his eye widened as he watched as she and all her clones simultaneously pulled out a weapons scroll of their own.

"Ninja tool technique: Metallic rain times six!"

Axes, shurikens, kunai and an array of various other small weaponry mixed with her own touch of the occasional exploding scroll hurtled themselves at the enemy from all angles, many missed but that was part of her plan. The missed weapons fell through the opposite scroll and burst back through their respective scroll again, elongating the attack and disintegrating the Shinobi's pitiful defence of bloodies hands and arms. He could no longer raise his arms to guard his face, but it wasn't simply because of the agony of the attack. A wide fork of lightening skittered across the sky and it revealed a thin network of wire tangled between the many Kushina's hands and they were wrapped around the screaming man who had finally collapsed to his knees.

The Kushina's tossed their scrolls to the ground towards their opposite doppelganger and it made the enemy Shinobi fall painfully onto his back with a groan of unconcealed agony.

"One last chance. Tell me where she is and I'll get you help."

The man's breath caught in his mouth and he coughed a dark bubble of blood, he spluttered until it slid down the side of his mouth. "I don't know what you are talking about."

The sheer honesty rang through his voice that told her he was a man with nothing to loose, "What?" She gasped, "The why were you-"

"Told to distract... anyone who came our way. Don't know who but paid a lot - of money." The man gasped as his head rolled sideways, the rain washed the cold metal of his headband to reveal that it was blank and the rock countries symbol was nothing but an illusion.

"You have to be lying, tell me!" Kushina cried as she fell to the floor beside the dying man, she ignored the pain of the shards of metal from the ground around them. "Tell me damn you!" She shook his arm as she shouted to him but froze.

His eyes were blank and his form lay limp against the wire. His frame was breathless; he was dead.

A vice called though the darkness around her, all sounds had vanished around her as she had interrogated the now dead man before her. "Kushina-Sensei!" It was Izumo; she did not need to turn to know that the other two had defeated their opponents. The only sound now was her remaining teammates' footsteps coupled with the falling rain.

"Sensei?" Hagane asked her, he did not need to ask anymore.

"He said nothing about Anko. Nothin' at all. I'm..." She let out a withheld breath in a gasp as she bit her lip.

Hagane replied strongly, "Don't be."

Izumo looked across the grassland in thought and tried to calculate how far away from the Village they were, with the ever darkening sky and the pouring rain, he knew they needed to move before they were intercepted again, "We need to move; with the storm I'd be surprised if they could contact us again anytime soon."

"Yeah," Kushina agreed as she pulled herself to her feet, "There's no point in taking them with us. I got all I needed."

They moved forward with a leap and rushed through the branches of the many trees which surrounded the Village of Konoha. It was said that every Hokage had planet and grown the trees using a special Wood elemental technique. She supposed that was how the Village got its name, Kushina thought idly. Her mind kept pressing her to think on what the Shinobi had said; 'Told to distract... anyone who came our way. Don't know who but paid a lot - of money.' They were dressed as Rock-nins and fought like them but their headbands wouldn't confirm it. I wasn't normal for enemy kidnappers to hang around once their targets had bee taken to distract. She knew from her own experiences as a child that they wanted to leave quickly and without a trace. So why did someone pay for them to stay behind as a distraction?

A flash of yellow and white burst through the trees and for a moment she thought that lightening had struck. Hagane swore with shock but relaxed when the forms of three other young Shinobi followed. They saw it was Minato and his team. Her already on-edge team had reacted with hostility and Minato apologetically said,

"Tried to contact you but the static..." He saw their torn clothes and the odd array of cuts and bruises they had gained in the fight, "What happened? Did you –"

"Men who dressed and fought like they were from the Rock country stopped us as we returned. Probably missing-nin since their headbands were fakes. They didn't know anything about Anko..." Izumo informed them with a glance to his own two teammates, "They were hired to slow us down."

Confusion and sadness washed over Minato's face, Rin made an apologetic sound as she wrapped her arms around herself to try and keep warm. Obito sniffed slightly as he looked down in disappointment. Kakashi remained indifferent as ever. Kushina couldn't even summon the will to care.

"Mild set-back. We'll find her!" Hagane suddenly shot through the dull silence, the others looked at him with surprise and with a small glimmer of hope panged in Kushina's heart.

She couldn't trust her voice to agree but she nodded with a smile as her warm tears mingled with the rain.

She tipped another clay cup of the strong clear drink down her throat and slammed it down with a cough. Her head ached and her body felt too warm and slow. Kushina peered down the neck of the clay bottle between them and flicked it at the side to listen to the sound.

"'Think its dead." She muttered.

"You kept drinking it so quickly, I'm not surprised," Minato muttered back as he lent heavily on the table with his chin rested upon his arms. "You're supposed to dilute it, not drink it like that."

"I think the Ramen place should do booze. That's be perfect! Food and drink all under the mane roof. I should tell the guy of my brilliant plan and then claim a large share in his earnings. I'd be rich in a week!" Kushina cheered as she prodded the empty Sake bottle.

"Yeah, yeah. Great for the kids to see when they eat there. Adults getting drunk and falling into their bowls." Minato said as he rolled his eyes to her with sarcasm, "They could put the bottles on the shelf by the flour. Know the one I mean?"

"Yeah yeah smart-ass. Its just an idea. And since when did you go all maternal?"

"It's paternal" Minato corrected in a beat.

"Whatever."

"I just care; it's not about being paternal. Ugh, come on. My head's killing me, we've missed last orders anyway." Minato said as he stood and reached inside his vest pocket to take out his wallet and paid their tab.

"Last orders? It's only early..." Kushina said, confused as she turned to look at the lock on the wall of the place and cursed, "Feck... I'm gonna be soooo tired for my sh... sh- sh..."

"Shift?"

"Yeah, shift tomorrow. Gotta have that de-briefing to that guy... Ibiki." Minato; the soberest of the pair, took Kushina's arm and lead her down the street, "I know he let me take charge of the mission brief on the roof... D'ya think he only let me as a charity case? I'd hate that to be the reason... I don't want him or nobody else 'ta feel sorry for me because of... Anko."

"Don't think so. He's not the type." Minato answered honestly to her as he peered through the darkened streets and figured out which was the best route to take.

"I guess not. After what happened to him I doubt he had any sympathy for anyone else. In a good way. He's a good Shinobi and better at being in charge then I'll ever be. He sees people so much better."

"I think you're underestimating yourself."

Kushina sang back to him in a low tune, "May-be but let me be down coz I'm sad." And she hugged his arm as she walked.

They had initially started drinking because Kushina was too distracted to simply go home and sleep and wait for her next shift in the morning. So, he took inspiration from his own Sensei's habits and proceeded to get them both drunk on Sake. The plan had escalated to them finishing off three bottles between them when Nara and is new fiancé arrived and proceeded to make them all feel old and more depressed. It was nice that even though times like this however, that normal things still continued to happen. He yanked Kushina as she wandered in a slow and meandering break for freedom from his arm.

"'Thought it was right." Kushina mumbled to him as she followed his lead.

"No, just the other right... Ugh, I'm never drinking Sake again. That stuff is poisonous."

"Say that now but we're cracking out another bottle when we bring her back." She said with a prod to his arm and Kushina didn't see a meander in the road and she stumbled into him, he took her other arm and righted her wordlessly before she continued with a smile, "You're gonna have to get over that hangover soon coz we're gonna do this again real soon when she's back."

Minato laughed, "I'm not as bad as you. I'll be ready." He smiled half heartedly as he looked up to the stairs which led to her apartment. "I think I better take you up."

Kushina protested, "But there's a –"

"Rail I know but I'd feel better if I helped."

Kushina grumbled as he led her up the concrete steps. An odd feeling had slipped into her stomach; it made her feel suddenly nervous. Exactly how she felt whenever he mentioned how they would always be friends... She always had this odd feeling of hope whenever he looked at her, helped her with anything, was near to her...

"Hey mind th-"

Minato managed to grab her just before she face-planted the stairs. Kushina righted herself as she sat down and rubbed her sore shins.

"I think I'm going for an all-time record for being a klutz tonight. Ow."

Minato sat beside her; half glad they had taken a breather but he turned to Kushina to realise she had been staring at him.

Kushina turned away quickly with warm cheeks, she had been thinking of how strange things were with Minato, what had changed? Was he getting tired of her? Kushina stood with renewed determination to tackle the stairs alone and marched up them with vigour.

"What's – "

"Nothing's wrong Minato."

There was something defiantly wrong with her. She never used his name.

"You looked like you were going to say something." He pressed as he followed her.

"I would have said something if I was about to say something. You know how impulsive I am." Kushina defended without looking around him. There were only thirteen steps but they had never felt this far before.

She fumbled in her pockets for the keys after she had finally reached the door.

"I never liked this colour. It seems horribly ironic, don't you think?"

Minato could hardly keep up with the odd conversation but saw she pointed at her red front door.

"I dunno, I always liked the colour."

"The door or my hair?" Kushina asked, lost in her own conversation.

"Th – we were talking about the door I like it. Both. I like both, why are you asking?"

Kushina paused in thought, "I just felt like asking." She tried another pocket for her keys, "Why though?" She couldn't help asking.

"I... its different." He admitted as he felt more perplexed as each second passed.

"Different in a goo-"

"I've always said I liked it." Minato said a lot quicker then he had intended, "I like the door being red because it reminds me of you, so I like that too. Where are we going with this?"

She shrugged, "Nowhere I guess. I didn't really have a plan. I said I was impulsive."

"Am I going to have to break in again?"

"Break – oh no I have them here." Kushina said as she pulled her keys to his face.

"Goodnight then I guess." Minato offered with a small wave.

"Yeah... see you tomorrow."Their eyes met for the briefest of moments and they both broke away simultaneously.

Kushina turned and snapped the door open and slid behind it, suddenly shy and gave him a small smile before she closed it.

Unbeknownst between the two of them, they lingered by the door in the dark and wondered what was happening between them. Emotions were high because of Anko's disappearance but this had been going on for some time. But what?

She pushed herself off the wooden panelled door and walked into the kitchen to turn the kettle on and flopped onto the couch and fell instantly asleep.

Alcohol... bad for you kids.

Ahhh... my last ever chapter to edit. I can FINALLY continue with my planned story. Thank you so much for keeping with me. For all of your comments, advice, interest and just generally being awesome people.

I would love to hear from you more now I have re-written EVERYTHING to make this a better story, something that deserves your time more. I hope you've liked it so far.

There will be no more time skips for the near future. We've finally reached where I'm gonna write the bulk of this story now.

I wonder how much of my Britishness is coming off from the swearing. Haha. I try and keep it as minimal as I can as it is a T after all but I'm allowed some small profanities if the time and place is calling for it right?

Roll on the summer and roll on the writing.

Read and review guys!

Peace.

Lonski.