A Loving Heart, A Body of Steel

by renegadeofficer89

Love is the only cure to hatred. A person with a heart so big that he can accept anyone in his life, either human or not will be the saviour of the world. With a body of steel, he will rise above the hatred of the world, and be the catalyst to bring peace. Bloodline/Strong/Naruto, NaruxFemKyuuxHina pairing.

19. Chapter 17: Kushina's Day Out

As said a couple chapters ago, these are unbetaed, unchecked and unpolished. And might not be so for a long time. Or at least until someone adopts it.

Once again, this DOES NOT mean I'm continuing this story. It's just there in my drives and it kinda annoys me.

So these are the last chapters you'll get from me for this story.

Anyone who wanted to adopt this story is welcome to PM me. I'll cooperate, easily.

Peace out, and enjoy this last gasp of breath for this story.

CHAPTER 15: KUSHINA'S DAY OUT

-CHAPTER START-

The bell that hung over the store's door rang as it opened, revealing the peeking face of the owner's favourite customer, Yamanaka Ino as she yelled out "Michiko-san! Are you in?!" before pushing the door open wide before her and her entourage entered the door, with Kushina being forced to duck a bit due to her massive height.

Coming from the back of the shop was a lady wearing a simple long, flowing dark blue coloured silk dress that seemed to shine as she walked, her steps delicate and flowing on her high heels, the mark of a classy yet beautifully simple lady. Her face seemed to shine as she saw Ino and her friends, knowing that she had her favourite client in her shop again as she walked to where she was, slipping through the masses of clothes hanging around her shop on display. "Yamanaka-sama! Welcome! How can I help you today?" she asked with a smile, her attention completely fixated on Ino.

With a shook of her head, Ino said "Today is not one for me, I have an order for someone else."

"Oh? Whose?" This doesn't happen regularly, though she understood that sometimes she took orders from someone else instead of just her own.

"For her," Ino said, pointing her thumb to her back. Following the direction her thumb was pointing, Michiko gasped when her eyes met the relatively gigantic body of Kushina, her eyes in both shock and fear at the sight of Kushina in her shop even as Kushina looked at her in hope with a smile on her face. Trembling slowly, she placed her hand on her mouth before she slowly said "T-t-the Demon Child..." with a trembling voice.

Immediately Kushina had an instant mood change, her hope and happiness making a U-turn to sadness and acceptance as she turned around and about to leave when a tug on her arm made her turn back around where her eyes met the angry eyes of Yamanaka Ino before she turned back towards Michiko. "Michiko-san!" she said out loud. "She's a customer! Why are you so afraid of her?!"

Michiko snapped back in shock as her terrified eyes met the angry eyes of Ino, her entire body language showing her just how much Ino was disappointed and angry at her. "B-b-but..." she said slowly before her voice rose. "SHE'S A DEMON! THE KYUUBI'S DAUGHTER!"

"I KNOW!" Ino replied back with her own shout. "I KNOW THAT! SHE KNEW THAT!" her hands swept to her fellow friends in the shop as they circled Kushina, an angry look on each of their face. "THEY KNEW THAT! BUT WHY ARE THEY SO CALM ABOUT IT?!" she shouted again before she drew a deep breath and ready to scream again.

She felt it as a huge palm patted her shoulder, causing her to stop her shouting match with Michiko and turn around, only to come face to face with a sad looking Kushina. "Don't worry about it," she said with that same sad smile on her face. "I'm used to it."

"NO!" Sakura shouted out this time. "You cannot be used to this!" she then turned back to face Ino. "Ino-pig, do something!"

As shocked as Ino was when Sakura called her with that nickname that she haven't used for a long while, she went back face to face to Michiko, still frozen in shock and horror where she was. An idea popped into her mind, giving a grin to her face as she asked Michiko. "Michiko-san?"

"Y-yes?" she said, still horrified at Kushina's presence and shocked at how her favourite customer yelled at her like that just now.

"How much would you charge for a beautiful, high class dress like yours?" she asked, trying to butter up her dress.

"A-about 50,000 ryo," Michiko replied.

"What about this then? We'll pay you 5 times that, 250,000 ryo for her dress," Ino said in confidence. Everyone had a price, and they just need to find hers.

Besides, a high ranked mission paid millions of ryo, and they took so many that they'll be swimming in cash. Paying so much wouldn't be a problem at all.

"N-no!" she yelled out in reply. "I will not, even with that much money!"

A smile appeared on Ino's face as she haggled for an even bigger multiplier. Being the Yondaime's son, Naruto had a HUGE amount of money, not to mention all the high-ranked missions that they took on. The unlimited budget that he gave her wasn't just for show. Being a frugal family, the entire family didn't spend much, only enough for them to live happily. Money won't ensure happiness anyway, just a path towards it. "What about 500,000?" she added.

"Ino!" Sakura whispered loudly beside her. "That's an insane price!"

"Don't worry!" she replied back. "This is for Kushina anyway! No cost is too high, and Naruto gave us unlimited budget!"

"Yeah, Ino! Don't just spend it like that!" Yakumo interjected now. Even if the Uzumaki-Namikazes had a whole lot of money, it's not her own to spend it like it's dried leaves at the roadside! They spent blood, sweat and tears to make that much money!

"No worries, you two!" she hissed back. "Just shut up and I'll make this work!"

Not realising this, Michiko had a dreamy look on her face as she pictured the amount of money that she'll get from making such a dress. Her daydream snapped when she realised that she'll have to make one for the Demon Child, the Kyuubi's daughter herself. "N-no!" she shouted again, her voice wavering as her inner spirit lamented the loss of such a huge amount of money. "I will not!"

"Okay…" Ino said. "What about this? 50 times that! 2.5 million ryo! That's an offer I'm sure you can't refuse!" she said out loud.

"2-2.5 MILLION?!" the voice of everyone in the shop exploded at the sheer absurd amount of money that Ino offered towards the lady. Even Kushina and Michiko were shocked at such an absurd amount of money being offered. 2.5 million ryo for a dress?! That's worse than crazy, that's totally, completely insane!

Michiko's incredulous look changed into a dreamy one as she recalled everything that she would be able to buy with that much money. She could renovate the shop, maybe move it somewhere. Buy a bigger house, even start building a mansion! Her family would be able to eat great foods any time. She'll live like a lord! Drool started flowing out of her mouth as she daydreamed about everything that she'll be able to do with so much money…

Before she snapped back in anger. "You insolent child!" she screamed out. "Do you think for one second that I'll believe what you said?!" levelling a trembling finger towards Kushina, she said out in a shaky voice. "Do you r-r-really think that t-t-this… this demon child had that amount of money?!" she said out in both anger and fear.

Not for one second did she ever thought that Kushina could just kill her if she wanted to and be done with her antics.

"U-um…" Kushina slowly said, lifting a timid hand upwards. A hanyou who could go toe-to-toe with a bijuu and not so much an inkling of fear on her face, but is afraid of a lowly tailor of a boutique. Social interaction wasn't her suite anyway. Punching giant chakra monsters in the face? That's a whole different story. "I… I can pay in advance, if you'd like. Dad gave me some money. He said, 'In case.' Guess I understand now." She said, putting a hand on a seal on her left wrist, before in a small puff of chakra smoke, out came her wallet, a regular pouch with the picture of a fox on it, one that her mother made for her.

Everyone watched with bated breath as she slowly opened her wallet's zipper, pulling out a giant wad of bills from in it before she resealed it back and started counting the money. The relatively small paper money felt extremely thin to her as her hands quickly flicked the money, counting it. The jaws of everyone present nearly dropped to the floor as she finished her calculation of the money. "1 million ryo in cash. H-how's that?" she asked with a trembling voice.

Michiko was absolutely, completely shocked at how much money she just pulled out of her small pouch. That pouch, just as big as her hand (which was actually quite big, once she thought about it) had a million ryo in it?! "What… how did you get that much money in that pouch?!" she asked in shocked.

"Uh… the wallet's lined with special seal that made it bigger inside than outside…" she answered. "Here, you can hold it if you want…" she said, her voice still shaky with worry as she stretched her hand, the bundle of money still in it as she handed it towards Michiko.

Also shaking, but with fear, Michiko came towards her slowly before grabbing the money from her hands, her eyes looking in case she actually wanted to kill her instead, the money just a bait. Quickly pulling away, she flipped the wad of cash, ensuring its authenticity before quickly running her fingers through them to ensure that they're real and that it's accurately counted.

Finally, after a while, she said with a quivering voice, but this time from disbelief. "1… exactly 1 million ryo…" her mind immediately weighted her choices: To follow her own heart and toss them out of her shop and lose the one million ryo in cold hard cash that she's holding right now in her hand, or to just make her a dress, the best dress she possibly could, potentially earning a praise from the Yamanaka and making so much profit that she could close her shop and it won't even matter. Her eyes went from the bundle of cash in her hands to the demon, to and fro and to and fro, and finally, she made her choice.

"A-a-alright…" she said, still trembling in both fear and shock. "I… I'll make her dress. This will be the advance payment, a-a-and I expect the rest later… o-okay?" she asked, still with fear and uncertainty.

"Okay~!" Ino replied happily before tilting her head to glare at her friends. "I know it'll work! I told you!" she hissed to her back.

"Luckily it did!" Sakura replied in anger. "That's way too expensive, and you know that!" a fact entered her head before she said out, "You'll have to explain later to Naruto why he'll have a couple million billed to his account later!"

Ino scoffed at this, though inwardly, she was white as a sheet. One wrong word with Naruto and she'll be dead! "Don't worry!" she said, grinning. "I'll explain to him later!"

"You better!" Yakumo said now. "I don't know what Naruto-sama will do if he found out!"

"I know! I know!" she replied. "Let's look around, maybe we can get some good clothes around here while she takes Kushina's measurements." She suggested before she broke off the group and went to look around, Sakura and Yakumo following her not long after, confident that Kushina can take care of herself should anything happens.

Meanwhile, Michiko called Kushina to follow her through her shop to go towards the back room. "Follow me," she said. Much to her surprise, even when she's so big and that her shop was packed with clothing and material, she nimbly dodged everything as if she's actually smaller than how she looked and smoothly went with her towards the back room, a curtain pulled to cover her new customer as she prepared herself to take her measurements. But first… "D-don't do anything s-stupid," she warned. "I-I-I'll scream out if you do." Even though she knew it wouldn't help so much, at least it could confirm to everyone that she's a demon and not one to be trusted.

"O-okay…" she answered, scared as well. Though she made the oath to protect them, she only saw their bad side. This was the first time she was allowed to do something as a regular person even if it means that she'll have to be bribed for it. "W-what should I do…?"

"Uh… take off your clothes… I'll measure your body…" Michiko asked, looking at her gigantic body in both awe and fear. Sure her dad's huge, but she's not small too compared to everyone.

"O-okay…" she said before she removed her white shirt, revealing her plain white sports bra underneath the shirt before she removed that as well, revealing her massive D-cup chest for her to see before she turned around, showing her bare back towards Michiko.

And what a sight it was! Even Michiko was shocked if her gasp was to be believed. She had a lot of kunoichi as customers, but this… she nearly seemed like perfection incarnate! Her fully developed body was so sexy that her instincts as a fashion designer made her wept at such a beauty hidden by such a plain shirt. Her taut muscles were visible even underneath her skin, showing just how little body fat she had and how much she trained for her killer body, both literally and figuratively.

Her personal interest stoked now, she reached a trembling hand towards her back. But just before reaching it, her hand stopped suddenly before she asked, not wanting to cause discomfort at her most paying customer ever. "Can… can I touch your body…?" she asked, no longer quivering, but still with an undertone of fear.

"Uh… sure." Kushina replied with uncertainty and fear. Only her parents and those who fought her had touched her body, and no one else. She was shunned anyway, no matter her beauty. And those who fought her... well, they didn't touch her for anything good, and they usually end up dead afterwards.

Her smooth fingers touched her back, and immediately she pulled her hand back like she was shocked as she felt her fingers touch a weird jelly-like layer on her skin. "W-w-what is that?!" she screamed out, grabbing her hand as if it's on fire.

"Uh… that was a part of my bloodline," she explained. "It's… it's a special coating that special glands on my skin made to act as protection against extreme weather and conditions. It's harmless." This would be the first time that a civilian touched her like that, but she welcomed such a foreign touch. It's so that she could understand regular humans better. She's a sheltered girl, and she knew it more than ever now.

Unseen by Kushina, she nodded before once again placing her finger on her back, ignoring the strange feeling that the coating caused before finally touching her skin. Once more, she recoiled in shock. However, she still had her finger on her skin. The skin itself was weird. Leathery to the touch, it's tougher than anything she's ever held. She may have held leather products, but hers... they felt tougher than even those.

Still in both awe and fear, she dragged her finger along her skin, creating tingles to Kushina that felt like she was shocked by a minor Raiton jutsu as her finger slowly passed through her spine, her body hairs erect as she nearly shivered from her touch. "My skin..." she said, trying to appease her bubbling curiosity. "It's tougher than regular person's, also from my bloodline." Having had Uchiha and Hyuga customers, she understood a little about bloodlines, though hers still differ greatly than theirs. "Mine... it's a body based bloodline, in that it... modifies my body."

She absently nodded as her fingers, the numbers increased as she reached lower behind her back, kept running along her body, feeling the steel cord-like muscles that ran through her entire body. Her entire muscles felt taut and strong, stronger than anything she ever touched. Lifting her hand away from her back, she slowly said, "Please... can you crouch...?" she's extremely tall anyway, and trying to feel the rest of her Astarte body (not that she knew that name) would be extremely difficult.

"O-okay..." she answered, before she crouched down, letting the tailor do whatever she wanted. Once again she continued her touch of Kushina's strange body, her hands going towards her shoulders. Giving them a squeeze, she gasped in shock as she realised that her muscles were extremely powerful! They're tough and strong, not something that can be achieved regularly. "You... your muscles..."

"Uh, yeah... it's my bloodline too," Kushina answered. "Why am I so scared?! I can face down armies and bijuu and two angry mothers, yet I'm scared of this lady?! Not that she can hurt me!" she thought, her own fear at this tailor scaring herself.

"Wow…" she said in awe as she gripped her deltoid muscles, feeling the powerful fibrous bundles barely holding back their own massive strength as Kushina stood still, not moving an inch from her. "You're…"

"Yeah," she said with a sad smile. "Call me a demon or anything you want. I am a human and a demon, both at once. More than human, yet less," she slowly said, for the first time revealing her emotions towards someone not close to her.

"Ah…" Michiko said, no words in her mouth on what to say towards Kushina as her words hit her hard. Now that she touched her body, she realised something. Demon or not, they're still human.

"You…" Kushina slowly asked before she turned her head to peek behind her shoulder to look at Michiko. "Do you want to see my tails…?" she asked with a scared voice.

"T-tails…?" Michiko said.

"Y-yeah…" she nodded. "I usually hide it unless if I'm in my hanyou form or in battle."

"W-wait!" Michiko said out in surprise before seven bushy tails seemed to pop out of nowhere from her tailbone, the fluffy tails slowly swirled within the small room as Michiko, in her shock at the sudden appearance of the massive, 5' long tails from her back, fell to the ground on her butt. "W-what are you doing?!" she cried out in fear.

"W-well," Kushina said, pushing her fingers together with a blush on her face like how her Hina-mama used to do before she became a part of her family. "You… you felt like you're interested in my physique… so I made them appear…" she said shyly.

Scared as she was, the lady in her was still interested at the sight of her fluffy, golden blonde tails. And somehow, their slow, lazy swaying felt like it hypnotized her into taking a hold of one of the tails, their white tipped end seeming to invite her to touch them as the golden fur shone in the room's light. Standing up slowly, she reached a trembling hand to hold one of those beautiful, lush tails in her hands.

Her hands softly gripped her bushy tails, feeling her furs on her hands. And what a feeling it was! She gasped in shock once again, the softness of her fur something to behold. The long furs of her tails felt like high quality mink, the hairs on them silky soft that it almost felt like touching clouds. They shone under the white light of the room, their glow having an ethereal quality around them as the furs stood straighter underneath her slow, almost sensual ministrations.

"Um... how is it?" Kushina asked, still shying away for some reason.

"It's... it's soft," Michiko replied, not believing that this lady, the daughter of a bloodthirsty demon that attacked their village before had such an exquisite feel to her tails. "Uh... can I wrap it around my neck?" she asked, her fears abating the more she felt her body. They may be characteristics of a demon, but their beauty and their gentleness was something that even the most hardcore demon hater cannot deny, at least to her.

"Uh... sure," she replied, unsure at what she wanted from such an act. Sure her tails were soft and warm, they act as her blanket at night even when she didn't need one, but it's not something to fuss over, was it?

Having her agreement, she took one of her tails before she slowly wrapped it around her neck, placing a hand to prevent it from completely wrapping around her neck, fearful that she might just break hers. Even as she held the tail's flesh, she could feel the same strength as her arms contained within them, a fact that nearly made her sure that she'll snap her neck in two. But nothing of sorts happened, and she wrapped her tails around her neck like an excellent mink scarf, something she never expected to happen from a demon child.

And the feel... it's out of this world! Her eyes closed in pleasure as she savoured the feel of her warm, powerful tail around her neck, the warmth emanating from it as gentle as the morning sunlight as the long furs tickled her neck and shoulders gently, almost like her long lost mother's embrace even as the same furs nearly covered her entire face. Grabbing her tail, she sniffed the part that was in front of her face. The smell they made is one of nature, the comforting smell of earth and morning dew nearly made her faint from euphoria, the smell itself unlike any leather or animal she's ever known. "The smell..." she said slowly.

"Um, mom said that the smell actually came from our association with nature, being kitsune hanyous, so we do smell a bit like the forest," she answered, uncomfortable at the fact that she was nearly raping her entirety without any sexual motive whatsoever. However, she had more patience and tolerance in her than what she displayed most of the time, so she just held it in.

"Oh," she answered before with a sad look on her face, she unwrapped the tail around her neck before she watched as the tails were sucked into her tailbone, the thick furs and tails disappearing like they're sucked by a vacuum before their trace disappeared completely, not a single wound or sign showing that it was ever there. "How... how do you store them?" she asked, still a bit uncomfortable at allowing a demon like her to show such things in her shop.

"Uh... it's instinctive, I guess," she replied hesitantly. "I was born with them, all seven of them, and somehow I knew how to hide them from when I first started to walk."

"When do you first start to walk?" Michiko asked, her fear still heard though she stopped stammering out her words, which for Kushina was quite a marked improvement.

"Uh... when I'm 3 months old...?" she said, uncertainty and fear clouding her words.

"3 months?!" Michiko replied in shock. "No one could walk at 3 months!"

"Uh, about that..." she hesitantly said. "My bloodline gave me increased growth and growth rate. I am actually just 10 years old..."

"10 years?!" she shouted in astonishment. How can someone just 10 years old be this big?! But just as quickly, her shock turned to understanding. "Your bloodline, wasn't it?"

"Yeah…"

Michiko's mind then snapped back towards her original task: to measure her sizes and take measurements for her to make her dress. Her highly overpaid dress. A dress that will make her rich. "Okay…" she said, no longer as scared of her as she was before. "Stand up, and I can start to take your measurements."

Nodding, Kushina stood to her full height, towering over the petite lady as she took out a measuring tape and took a stool from somewhere before standing up right beside Kushina and started to measure her most basic of measurements: her height. As she measured Kushina's height, she took that time to think about everything she learned about this demon child in front of her.

"She's a demon, alright," she thought as she remembered her tails suddenly appearing from her back. Her mind went back even further, remembering her body. "That strange layer, her tough skin and powerful body, all of those are inhuman! But… the way she speaks, she acts… Looks like she's scared."

This thought stopped her in her tracks as she was measuring the width of Kushina's shoulders, causing Kushina to look at her and ask in worry. "Michiko-san, what's wrong?"

Unknowing of Kushina's worry, Michiko stood on her stool, her entire body frozen as she had an expression of shock on her face. "Scared? How could she be?" she wondered. "She's a demon! The Kyuubi's daughter! An extremely powerful being! How could she be scared of me?!" she asked in surprise.

Once again she snapped back to reality as she saw a worried Kushina fussing over her, wondering what happened to her as she stood rigid on the stool. Luckily, she didn't fell from it. "Michiko-san, you spaced out just now. What happened?" she asked in worry.

"Oh, nothing," she replied before wrapping the tape that she held around her huge neck, trying to measure the circumference of her neck. Though the thought of strangling her and destroying the demonic lineage of the Uzumaki-Namikazes did came to mind, she knew better than to do so towards the all-powerful person in front of her. As she measured her neck, she asked slowly. "Miss… A-are you afraid…?"

A sharp gasp came out of Kushina's mouth as she tilted her head back to look into her eyes. "How… How did you know?" she said with a slow tremble in her voice.

This sent a jolt of surprise through her entire body as if she was hit by a lightning bolt. She? The Kyuubi's daughter? Afraid? Preposterous! "How are you afraid?!" she yelled out. "You're a powerful demon! A single swipe of your mother's tails could destroy mountains and create tsunamis! You yourself are extremely powerful and your mother's daughter too! How can you be afraid?!"

"True..." she slowly said. "I am powerful. I am strong. That cannot be denied," she replied, a hint of pride in her voice. "I fear not any enemy. I can face an angry bijuu, an entire army and even both at the same time without worry nor fear. I watched the world's evil, stared into its eyes yet I still swore to protect the world from it," he said, her voice rising as she said so. "But..."

"But?" Michiko asked, still confused on this demon in front of her. Why was she scared? What made her so?

"But..." she said, before her eyes shone with unshed tears without warning, though it went unseen by Michiko who stood behind her. "I was afraid. Afraid that you will not want to talk or deal with me, even with all that money."

"W-what?" Michiko replied in surprise. For just that small matter?!

"I..." she said hesitantly. "I was afraid that you'd shun me even more. I... I didn't have much human contact other than my family and some others. I was afraid that due to my differences and my demonic heritage, you'd stop dealing with me. I actually liked friends, but not many wanted to be friends with me. They..." she said, tears starting to pool within her sky blue eyes. "People hated my demonic side, and they hate me with it. Combined with my completely inhuman physique, it made me unable to have many friends. I was afraid that you'll hate me more now that you knew just how different I am from all of you," she said as droplets of tears slowly fell from her face.

"Dad told me to protect the people of Konoha, no matter how and where," she said slowly. "Even I took that same oath myself. But now that I've walked around the village in the daylight and watched as everyone around me threw dirty glares at me, it makes me sad. Sad that they hated me, but took no effort to know about me. In Konoha, a lot of people hated us, but out there, a lot of people liked us, just considering us as oversized people whenever we helped them." Slowly she sobbed, her humongous body shaking from her tears as it fell down.

Now she understood. Why her dad never let her went out after she grew, only during missions. Even then, after missions, she immediately went to the Hokage Tower and took her payment slip before returning back to the house. Even the lady that she befriended before might have forgotten her already, having not met her for quite some time after graduation. All of this was to prevent her from being directly shunned by the populace, to prevent her from having second thoughts about protecting the people. Having the hatred of an entire community that you've sworn to protect aimed at you had the tendency to make one change their minds on that, especially when others out there tend to not do so.

Michiko's heart finally opened at the sight of this hanyou in front of her as she cried, letting out all the bottled emotions that she had unconsciously stored during all those years of her life, living without anyone but her family. Not that she hated her family. She understood now why she was scared. She was just scared that she would be scared of her even with all that she did. She finally realised. The demons that she called them, though they were demons, were nothing but ordinary people at the end, but with an extremely powerful strength to them; both in their heart and their body.

"Kushina, was it?" Michiko asked, finally with a smile on her face as she placed a hand on her back, trying to calm this gentle-hearted giant hanyou. Now that she thought about it, it's weird, but it's not something that she can help with after listening to her story. Though she still felt that the strange coating around her was quite discomforting, at least to those who touched her skin.

"Y-yeah…" Kushina replied, sobbing slowly from her cry just now.

"Don't worry," she said with a smile. "I'm sure that others will finally get to learn how good you are."

"R-really?" she asked, feeling insecure. Her parents had always said that people will understand them one day, and this might just be the step towards it.

As she continued her patting of her back, she said. "I… I hated you and your family before," she said. "But none of my family members died because of the attack, so I had no reason to hate you other than the fact that the feeling that your mother, Kyuubi created when she attacks nearly made me had a heart attack. But other than that and following popular opinion, I had no reason to hate you. The only thing about you that I knew when I saw you was that you're a demon, the daughter of Kyuubi."

Wiping tears from her eyes, Kushina said, "On behalf of my mother, I ask of your forgiveness."

"Don't worry," she said with the same smile still on her face. Her apologizing in place of her parents (though Kyuubi already did that during the Great Reveal) shows just what kind of person she was, and how wrong the people actually was. "No one died or anything destroyed, so no harm done." Taking a deep breath, she continued. "Thanks to popular opinion, I hated you and your entire family, just like what others did. Basically, I just followed the crowd."

She walked around Kushina's massive body after getting down from the stool and placed a hand on her beautiful, tear-stained face. "But today, I learned a lot about you. You're not the demon that people thought you are. No bloodthirsty demon would have a fur that good, or at least that's my opinion. No human-hating demon would cry in front of someone she didn't know for no reason and feel scared at meeting a human. In my eyes, you've proved that you're not a demon, just a misunderstood person."

Her face gained a serious look before she added. "However, that's me. I didn't hate you that much, I just followed the crowd. Others will be harder to convince though."

"I know," Kushina replied, her eyes red from the crying that she did before, though a determined look was on her face. "But I will not stop! They'll know that I'm not a demon! I'll make sure they understood!"

Michiko had a smile on her face as she saw that the strong, happy girl that she saw entered her shop earlier which she pretended to ignore finally went back to her previous look, albeit with tear tracks down her face. Though that was quite weird, she had that strange layer on her skin, yet her tear tracks were still visible on her face. Does her face not have that coating? Shrugging, she said to Kushina. "Okay, but that's for a later date. Now, we have a dress to measure." Immediately complying, Kushina stood as Michiko immediately went to work on measuring her body.

-15 MINUTES LATER-

Sakura, Ino and Yakumo regrouped together at the shop's front door after looking through the clothes on display in the shop. And for the first time ever since she knew Ino, Sakura didn't see her taking any dress to buy, especially when he had a practically limitless budget like right now. "Ino, what's wrong with you?" she asked.

"What?" Ino asked back.

"Well, you're acting strange," she said. "You had near infinite budget, yet you didn't buy anything at a dress store. It's weird."

Ino huffed as she crossed her arms on her chest before she replied. "Well, I never knew that Michiko-san was a demon hater. Seeing how much Kushina-chan was hated right in front of my eyes didn't sit right with me, so I decided not to buy anything."

Squeezing through the two's friendly quarrel, Yakumo asked. "Hey girls. Do you hear that before? I think I heard Kushina-chan cry just now."

Sakura immediately dismissed Yakumo's concern. "Relax, Yakumo." Having lived for quite some time with the Uzumaki-Namikazes, she understood just why she cried. "Despite her strength, brutality and size, Kushina-chan's a softie, really. She must've managed to change Michiko-san's mind on her. Also, she's just a civilian. I doubt that anything weaker than a kage could even hope to injure her, so I doubt that she did anything to her."

True to her words, out came Michiko and a teary-eyed Kushina from the back room, both having a smile on their face despite how they started off, confirming Sakura's words. "So, got everything you need?" Sakura asked Kushina.

"Yeah," she replied before turning around and gave a bow towards Michiko. "Michiko-san, I'm sorry for anything that I might have done just now, and for everything that my mother did before."

"Don't worry," she said. "I already forgave you and your mother. And besides, as I said, I have no actual grudges with your family, just that I was following the crowd, you understand?"

"I do," Kushina replied with a dazzling, shining smile.

Michiko then put her hands into her pocket before she pulled out the wad of cash that Kushina gave her and handed it back to her. "Here, your money. I didn't take this much for a dress, as I've said before, so you can have it back."

Kushina still had the electrifying smile on her face as she placed a hand over the money and pushed it back towards her. "Keep it," she said. "I can look for money. My father can, my entire family could. That much is absolutely nothing to us. It's practically pocket change. The only thing that I want is your belief. In me and my family. I've considered you a friend already, so take it. I'll pay for the rest later. Just make sure that you make a nice dress for me."

"I will," Michiko said in shock as she held the bundle of money in her hands, tears falling from her eyes at such a generosity. "I'll make you a dress so beautiful, you'll want to wear it at all times. You'll never forget the dress that I made, I'm sure of it."

"I can't even if I want to," Kushina replied. She then turned back towards the rest of her group as they all smiled at her. "Alright girls. I guess that's all we're going to do here, so let's go." She was pushing the group away when she heard Michiko called her before she exited the store.

"Kushina-san!" she heard her call. Turning around, Michiko immediately gave her an advice. "Kushina-san, grow your hair longer! You're more beautiful that way!" she said.

Perplexed but agreeing, she just nodded and said "I will. See you later," as she turned back around and exited, the bell on the door once again ringing as they all exited, Kushina being the last to walk out of the store.

Still holding the huge wad of cash, Michiko smiled as she looked at the bundle of cash. "She… we're wrong about them. About everything." Turning around to head towards her safe where she stores her money, she said to herself again. "I'm sure that I can make a good dress with that. Just wait for it!" she said, resolve burning in her eyes as she pictured the sight of the gigantic Kushina wearing her dress to a function somewhere. She then went to the rearmost portion of the shop, ready to start designing Kushina's awesome dress.

-WITH KUSHINA-

Kushina walked in front of the girls with a smile on her face and a spring on her step. Despite her ninja training, the Uzumaki-Namikazes had a natural disposition at exposing their feelings to the world when not in a condition that needs it. Turning around to look at Ino, she said with a grin. "Okay, we've done that, so where to next?"

Ino can't help but grin together with her. Also due to that same disposition, they tend to cause the people around them to have the same feeling they did, bringing others to happiness and fervour just as quickly. "Well, someone's happy," she said, a face-splitting grin on her face.

"I am!" she said as she twirled like a ballet dancer in combat gear right in front of them. "I made another friend!" she said, twirling once more, her Lyman's Ears preventing her from losing her balance as she made a 1080o spin in front of them before stopping and looked to the sky with sparkles in her eyes. "I didn't much friend among the villagers, so a new one would be a cause for a celebration!" she said happily, not realising the darkening mood of the three girls looking at her.

Her innate emotion sensing ability picked up this change of mood, abruptly stopping her as she looked at the three in worry. "Girls? What's wrong? I said something wrong?" she asked.

With a forced smile on her face, Sakura said, "Nope! No problems at all, Kushina-sensei! We're all fine! Right girls?" she said, turning around to face the other two girls around her as they both pasted a fake smile on their face as they hid their anger at the village. No one should be shunned like that! She didn't even had friends because everyone was too afraid of her! "Yeah, no problem!" Ino answered, Yakumo following suit a bit after. "Yup! No worries!" Yakumo said next.

Kushina looked into their eyes, trying to judge their emotions before she shrugged. "If you say so," she said as she turned around face forward. She knew that they were hiding something, but it's not her place to ask. Slowly she walked, her ears catching the sound of the girls' footsteps behind her. "So, where to next?"

Ino's mood immediately perked up at this. "What about shoes? Let's go! Maybe we can shop for an entire assemble for her today!" she said before she dashed away, the thought of shopping without limits bringing ecstasy to her mind.

"Uh, Ino-san..." Kushina said, failing in her attempt to stop Ino from running away before she sighed in defeat. "Regular shoes can't fit my feet..." she lamented as she looked downwards, her massive feet appearing in view.

Sakura just had a small smile on her face as she tried to comfort Kushina with a pat to her back. Even if she's much stronger than her and that she was her teacher, the fact still remains that Sakura was older than she was. "Don't worry, Kushina-sensei," she said, already familiar with her best friend's actions. "She's always like that. Let's just follow her and see if there's anything good for you."

Sighing, Kushina replied, "I suppose. Let's go."

And so, the three went ahead to chase after Ino, her overzealous shopping spree something to behold...

-3 HOURS LATER-

Despite Sakura's constant reminder and Kushina's constant inability to find clothing that she could wear, Ino still had the time of her life as she went around Konoha's multitude of shops and indulged herself in all the latest fashions and apparel, especially because Naruto gave them near unlimited budget for her shopping spree! Well, technically it wasn't for her, but Naruto still said that he'd cover everything and that she just needs to bill everything to his clan, and he'll handle the rest. And what a shopping spree that was to her!

However, not everything went nearly as smoothly, especially for Kushina. Other than the fact that most apparel that she wanted doesn't fit her size, there were only two types of people that they met. The first would be the demon haters, those who would glare at her at the very least and even threw her out of their shops at worst, screaming profanities along the way. The second would be those who would suck up to her, knowing that she was the Yondaime's granddaughter. And knowing that, they knew that she must have a lot of money. Money that was waiting to change hands, from hers to theirs. Some even had barely-concealed looks of hate on their face, but remembering just how much money that they stand to gain from treating her, they hold back their contempt of her, and placed their best foot forward to treat her as well as they could.

Unfortunately for the second types, she cannot wear anything they had since they're all made for smaller sized woman, though at least they had Ino as compensation who shopped without restraint, especially when Kushina gave her a sealing scroll which she immediately used to store her massive amount of purchases in them. And fortunately for the first types, Kushina and her entire family were the forgiving types, having no problems forgiving those who wronged them no matter how. Though Sakura, Yakumo and Ino tried roughing them up so that they'll have Kushina as a customer, she held them back, not wanting to use force to get them to learn about her, showing just how kind they were in actuality. However, their glares and words still dug deep into her heart, opening a wound that she never knew about, nor one that she expected, slowly growing deeper with every dirty look she gained.

Currently, the four reached a café at Konoha's bustling commercial district, ready to have their lunch. As the four pulled their chairs from underneath the tables, Kushina dragged hers away before unsealing her own steel chair, made by her own dad and painted with seals on them to help it withstood Kushina's extremely heavy weight. As they all sat around the same table, with Kushina looking strange beside the table, the height of it barely reaching her knees, Ino spoke out as they await the waiter's arrival. "I can't believe it! There's so many people here in Konoha who hates you!"

"It really can't be helped," Kushina said with a shrug, hiding her own disappointment and sadness behind a veil of fake smile that looked convincing to everyone but Sakura. "I can understand their reasons, and I don't blame them. Heck, sometimes I hated my bloodline. It may be extremely powerful and durable, but it made me so different than regular humans that it's hard to relate between them and me. Why can't my mom just gave us simpler bloodlines, maybe like the Sharingan or something… Grandpa's eyes, or some sort of weird shit bloodline that can do a lot of other weird stuff like a bloodline copying eye or something? I mean, those didn't, and wouldn't, make us this inhuman. We even look different than regular human, what with us being 7' tall at our potential peak height." What makes it worse was the fact that she wasn't too sure whether that was her maximum height.

"You should be thankful to her," Ino said, some of the rarer times in her life where she became the voice of reason surfacing. "That bloodline of yours is crazy powerful, and it's the envy of every ninja, inhuman or not. But still," Ino continued, placing both elbows on the table in front of her before levelling a pointer finger towards Kushina, her tone both disappointed and angry. "They should take a bit more time to know you! You're not evil, and people should know that!"

"U-um..." a small voice interrupted their talk as the petite waitress that was supposed to serve them stood beside the table with a trembling hand that was holding the café's menus, her eyes shooting terrified sideways glances towards Kushina before she went around the circular table, placing the menus in front of the four with a shaky hand. "U-um... I'll come back lat-t-ter t-t-to take your o-orders, s-so... t-t-take your time!" she ended up saying the last part loudly before she scurried away like a frightened mouse, trying to escape from Kushina's sight as fast as possible before she peeked her head from inside the café's kitchen, looking at the four ninjas as if they're wild animals, just biding their time to explode in violence.

Kushina tilted her head to look at the waitress, and as their eyes made contact, she squeaked a tiny "Eep!" before running into the café's proper, the squeak heard clearly by Kushina.

Looking back towards the other three members of the table, Kushina sighed before she said. "Well, that kind of means that I have quite the work in front of me."

Ino, whose eyes also looked at the fleeing waitress immediately tried to say something in reply, but she decided not to. She already knew what she will face. No amount of preaching or speech would turn her back from what she already decided, so she decided not to. Instead, she wordlessly took the menu before picking her order, an action followed wordlessly by everyone on the table.

A short while later, everyone finished selecting their orders. So, with a slow yell, Kushina called out. "Waiter!"

For a couple of second, no reply was heard, no movement detected from the café. Then, slowly, the same short-haired waitress' head peeked out from the café as her eyeballs spun in worry at the person who called her. And as she confirmed, much to her fear, the person who called for her was none other than Kushina, the Demon Child of Konoha.

There's no other customer at the café anyway. Everyone else ran away as she and her group sat there.

Timidly she walked towards the only occupied table of the café, her every trembling step showing her fear at going face to face with one of the members of Konoha's Demon Family. As she reached the table, her mouth trembled in fear as she spoke out as confident as her absolutely frightened self can. "M-m-may I t-t-take your o-o-orders now?" she said, an extremely forced marriage of a frown and a smile on her face as beads of nervous sweat dripped from her brow.

Kushina's enhanced senses caught wind of her fearful sweat, causing her to sigh. "Miss, please. You don't have to fear me that much. We're here to give patronage to your shop, not to destroy it or to kill you. So please," Kushina said with a smile on her face as she looked at the small waitress, her full height barely over her head even as she was sitting on her chair. "Smile. You're cute. Not smiling makes you look less beautiful," she said honestly with a slow pat on her head.

It's funny sometimes, how a hand that can crush heads and break necks with a single grip also be so warm and comforting.

The waitress blushed as Kushina said and did so, her mood improving a little at her praise and words of assurance as she basked in the comforting warmth of her hand. Slowly her strange, forced smile became a much more honest one, though still not the full dazzle of her cute smile, or at least what Kushina thought her smile would look like. But it's an improvement. "Uh…" she stammered out, garnering a disappointed sigh from Kushina which made her face red in a blush before she asked "M-may I take y-your order now?"

"I'll have the Extra-Large Super Supreme Parfait with extra chocolate topping," Kushina said. "You guys?"

"I'll have a café latte," Sakura ordered.

"Me too," said Ino.

"Uh… just plain water," Yakumo said.

Bowing a bit in acceptance of the offer, the small waitress said with that same partially forced smile on her face. "C-certainly," she said. "T-thanks for the order. Please wait w-while we prepare your o-o-orders," she stuttered out before she dashed towards the kitchen, bringing the orders and her fears into the shop.

Ino's inquisitive eyes shot directly towards Kushina's bright blue eyes before she asked. "Kushina-chan, what did you do that for?"

She tilted her head in confusion as she asked, "Do what?"

"That!" Ino yelled out, though not enough for the staff to hear. "Petting her head!"

"Oh that?" Kushina replied. "Well, she's too scared of me I think. I can smell her fear even from within the shop. My mother used to calm me down with a pat like that when I'm a bit hyper or when I'm in pain when I was a toddler, so I tried doing that on her. Who knows, it may calm her down a little."

Sakura knew first-hand how powerful those palms of hers was, having taken many blows from them during her training. A single palm strike from her could send her flying quite a ways away, not to mention the fact that those same palm could act like a miniature shield, deflecting kunai and shuriken without a single scratch or wound on them. "Strange, really, Kushina-sensei." On the other hand, she also knew just how warm those hands were, having helped her from her injuries so many times, helping her recover from almost near-death experience, and even calm her sad soul at her family's unsaid banishment of her. "But I know just how calming can you hand be," she said with a smile.

Also, she knew just what kind of bullshit she spewed when she said that she was 'a bit hyper'. She's damn sure she's nowhere near 'a bit'.

"Really?" Ino said in curiosity. "Is there a story behind that?"

"There was," Sakura said, but with sadness tainting her face as she looked downwards. "I don't want to talk about it," she said. Ino, who recognizes the instant change of mood knew better than to ask her of it, and decided to just stay quiet.

A sudden silence and heavy atmosphere fell upon the table like a cloud of despair, causing the four girls to stay silent as shadows seem to cover their eyes. Yakumo, who rarely talked during the entire day, suddenly felt the urge to erase this silence, causing her to say out loud, much to her friends' shock. "You guys know what? Let's go to a spa!"

"A spa?" Sakura reacted back. "That sounds good. Haven't been to one in a long while."

"Oh yeah!" Ino said, clapping her hands together in agreement. "Get some massage, have a stay at the sauna, maybe enjoy a hot, aromatic bath together with that! Nice idea! Why didn't I think about that before?!"

"A spa?" Kushina asked in confusion. Though she's had passing glances of it, she never went to one before. "Never went to one," she answered her own question truthfully.

"Then you really should!" Ino said cheerfully, the thought of having her body gently massaged by the expert masseuse of a nice spa with the relaxing aroma of herbs and perfumes that they use for their aromatherapy bringing a feeling of serenity to her. "Let's go! I know a nice spa!"

"You know every shop in Konoha anyway..." Sakura mumbled sideways, though everyone heard this.

"Hell yeah!" Ino answered happily, the despairing feeling from now not even registering right now as the entire table happily laughed in humour. The mood over the table instantly brightened from one simple suggestion from Yakumo, a change welcomed by everyone.

This scene was one that the waitress encountered as she held a tray containing all of the orders for the entire group, the centrepiece being Kushina's massive Extra-Large Super Supreme Parfait with extra chocolate topping, a massive foot-wide, one half foot tall glass with an insane amount of ice cream taller than the bowl itself with huge slices of banana, strawberry, kiwi and apples layered between vanilla ice cream together in the glass with wafers and massive waffles stuck around the peak and a hill of whipped cream at the centre, a cherry on top of the mound with an ocean of chocolate covering everything with lines upon lines of delicious liquid chocolate with a generous sprinkle of chocolate powder and chocolate strips on top of those together with multiple chocolate bars sticking at the top like a cave's stalagmite among other, less visible stuff underneath all that jazz, the sight of which made everyone's mouth on the table water with appetite.

"Wow, Kushina-sensei! You're having that?! Alone?!" Sakura asked. Sure she's seen her eat strange, inedible stuff like kunai, tree bark and even soil, but never ice cream. And for her, that much ice cream is definitely a killer on one's figure! Not to mention the fact that she rarely saw her eating luxury foods like that. She only saw her eat regular foods other than the array of whateverness that she usually ate just for fun.

"Yeah," she said happily. "It sounds so cool in that menu, so I wanted to try it. And it looks great! Can't wait to have a scoop of that stuff!" she said as her entire body seemed to fidget with a childlike enthusiasm. Sakura can't help but to smile as she watched this display of childishness from her sensei. She understood extremely well that she rarely had any time nor chance to act as a regular child as her age suggested, so this sight seemed to bring a certain sadness to her heart.

"You look happy, sensei," Sakura said as she placed both elbows on the table before supporting her head on her hands, a bright smile on her face as she looked at her sensei in happiness.

"Of course I am!" she replied. "It's not every day I can try something like that! I rarely even went out of the house nowadays if not for missions! Getting to try something like this on a holiday is just not something I usually do!" she added.

Unbeknownst to them, the petite waiter carrying the tray with their orders was having huge problems right now. All their workers have ran away as they saw the Demon Child coming, so the only one left would be her alone. She understood though, and if not for the fact that the owner of the café was her father, than she won't be able to find it in herself to serve them as well. Her problems stem from the fact that the huge parfait was causing her to wobble unstably as she walked towards the table they're at, the tray she's holding wobbling unsteadily despite her best effort, her fear of the Demon Child doing nothing to help with her current situation.

With as much caution as her terrified self could muster, she tiptoed towards the table, very much aware of the heavy weight she's holding between her hands. Not one step went by without her shouting curses in her mind at her father's disappeared workers. Though they may not like the demon, her father still understood of the demon's reputation in the village and what she was. No matter if the populace hated them, business is still business, and the show must go on, which forced her to reluctantly serve them.

Besides, angering a demon would create a potentially lethal and destructive situation, which would be bad for everyone.

Her chaotic mind failed to register the presence of a small pebble on the floor of the café, her mind going light years away from her current situation. And as per the world's unseen law, she felt it as her foot slipped on the small pebble. She saw as her entire vision slowed down from her surprise as she saw that she was slowly looking downwards towards the ground, everything she held sent flying ahead, including the massive parfait. She slowly watched as everything around her flew in slow motion as the orders flew towards the table, threatening to spill on the table's occupants as some of its contents already sped towards the table's occupants. Knowing of just who was on that table, she slowly squeezed her eye shut. "I am SO going to die! Everything is going to fall right on them! The demon will kill me!" she thought as she felt her body slowly fell towards the ground.

A couple of seconds that felt like an eternity passed before she felt that she hadn't tasted solid earth yet, which was a good, although mysterious thing. Opening her eyes, the first thing she saw was the bright radiance of something from beside her head, together with a powerful, warm feeling that was grabbing her shoulder. Completely alert now, her eyes darted everywhere, trying to see what actually held her from falling and kissing the ground in all its rocky, completely painful splendour. What she saw nearly made her scream out of her mind.

At her shoulder, she saw that the radiance and the warm feeling came from a strange vaguely armlike cylinder of golden flames which strangely does not burn her, but only gave out a certain feeling of calmness and security to it. Looking a bit further, she saw that her tray, the massive parfait, even the drinks that she carried were all suspended in the air with the same armlike construct of golden flames. Looking ahead, she realised that the weird golden flames were connected like tentacles to the arm of her third most feared person: Uzumaki-Namikaze Kushina. Immediately she trembled like a leaf as she felt the strange armlike flames again, her entire body sweating and quivering in absolute fear at her fate.

Completely ignoring the girl's extreme fear and Ino and Yakumo's gaping mouths and bulging eyes, Kushina let out a breath of relief. "That was close," she said with a smile towards the girl with her outstretched hand engulfed in the ethereal flame of her chakra cloak, the strange markings displaying over the arm as per usual as the cloak seeming to split into multiple arms that lengthened from where she was to where the girl fell, holding her steady while saving everything from falling down on the ground. Or worse, on them. "I had no time to do anything since I'm in this chair, so the best thing I can think of was to use my chakra arms to save everything. Sorry if I scared you," she said with a lame apology at the end.

The sheer power radiating from her multiple chakra arms made everyone except Sakura grew goosebumps all over their body as the arm on the waitress retreated, leaving her paralyzed figure standing where she was, her mouth gaping and her body sweating in fear as she stared at Kushina with wide eyes. Kushina guided her arms that were carrying their orders towards the table before setting them down slowly and said "Sorry if I scared you," she said.

The shivering waiter immediately screamed out loud "AAAAHHH!" before she turned her back towards the table and ran away into the shop immediately, leaving the figures of Ino, Yakumo and Sakura at the table, a small frown on both Sakura and Kushina's face. "Should've expected that," Kushina said slowly, doing her best to prevent tears from appearing on her eyes. "Those chakra arms definitely felt strange, I guess," she said as her burning arm disappeared without any indication of it ever being there, her shirt and sleeve not harmed at all by the flames.

"Wha… what was that?" Ino slowly asked. She understood her power, but this would be the first time that she felt such colossal amount of power radiating from her, not to mention the fact that those strange golden flames that covered her before. "I… I never saw something like that," she added, with Yakumo nodding her agreement at the same question, their fear and curiosity apparent.

"This-" Kushina said before lifting her hand and partially activating her chakra cloak again, causing her hand to burn with golden flames and caused Ino and Yakumo to once again be awash with her insane power, the huge black marking on the back of her hand a huge contrast to the light that the golden flames emitted. "-is my chakra cloak, which is my demonic powers activated," Kushina answered. "The cloak, when activated, gave me even faster regeneration, unrivalled speed, multiple extra limbs that can be used for a lot of things like punching someone, extra jutsus, grabbing things and the lamest use for it, as a source of light," she said with a bit of humour at the end, especially considering that she needs no light and is capable of seeing without any problems at night.

"So… T-t-that power… is your demonic power?" Yakumo asked. She never once felt such a power emanating from someone, much less demonic youki. "But… it didn't feel evil or anything. A lot of people said that your mother's youki was so vile that some suffocated from the evil that it felt. Why is yours not?" Yakumo asked.

"A good question," Kushina said before she willed her cloak to disappear, putting out the flames. "When my mother turned my dad into a hanyou, the demonic power was purified, leaving us with a huge ball of lifeforce, which was what demonic youki was at its most basic form. That's why jinchuurikis-"

Kushina's words were cut off by Ino quickly asking her "What's a jinchuuriki?"

"Oh, right," Kushina replied. "I forgot that we're not really taught about what a jinchuuriki was. Well, jinchuurikis were those people who had bijuus sealed within themselves, becoming a prison for the demon that they held. Jinchuuriki, or power of human sacrifice was what my father was before he released my mom. There are nine of them, one for each bijuu. As you all know, my dad was a jinchuuriki before he freed my mom, somehow making him a hanyou."

"Somehow?" Yakumo asked, confused about how Naruto became a hanyou.

"Yeah," Kushina replied lamely. "Truth is, no one actually knew what happened or how it happened, but when dad released mom from her cage, she forfeited all her powers towards dad, making dad a hanyou. At the same time, the power was somehow purified, becoming the purified youki that me, mom and dad can use. And from what we could tell, it will be inherited, making my dad's descendant hanyous, all of them. I'm the first, and I am proud of it." she said with a voice of pride, with sadness tinged behind it.

Continuing where she left off before Ino cut her off, she said. "Continuing, maybe that's why jinchuurikis can heal faster, become stronger and faster when they used the power of the bijuu they contained. But that's where the differences ends. Compared to regular jinchuurikis, we hanyous are more powerful because our power is ours, not one borrowed from another being in us. Also, the youki is purified, causing a certain calming and strengthening feeling instead of the dread, despair and death that the youki of a regular bijuu had, also making it not corrosive, thus not deadly compared to a bijuu's regular youki. In fact, as Sakura could attest-" she pointed a finger to Sakura who just nodded in agreement "-the purified youki could also heal and reenergize, considering that it is a ball of pure lifeforce. However-"

Kushina's words were cut off by the sudden appearance of a squad of three ANBUs in a swirl of leaves, Hare, Otter and Owl from the pattern of their masks appearing beside her. "Uzumaki-Namikaze Kushina," Owl said, being the leader of the group. "We felt youki from here just now. Care to explain why?" he slowly asked, being careful not to threaten her for anything. The ANBU squadron knew that the Uzumaki-Namikazes had a good reputation with both the Hokage and the ninjas that they worked with, and picking a fight with them is never a good idea, though he knew how much of a good guys that they were. God help those who went against them, for they have no one else that can.

"Oh, nothing," she said, dismissing them. Even a small amount of youki when activated could register on even the worst of ninja sensors, considering how potent they were, and any reason for them to be felt is a reason to investigate, and Kushina knew this, thus she expected their arrival especially since she could smell them coming. "I just need to save our food and a girl from falling on the ground, and to show my friends-" she said as she pointed to the other three occupants of the table "-about my powers."

Owl stayed silent for a bit as his eyes moved to check whether she was telling the truth. After a while, his sigh was heard through his mask, confirming that it's a false alarm. No one activates a kickass power just to save some falling food. It's like using an S-ranked Suiton jutsu to create drinkable water. It's overpowered and stupid. "Just don't do that again. The ANBU HQ panicked as they felt that. Some even thought that you were trying to destroy the village."

"Still more disbelievers eh?" she asked rhetorically with a sad smile. Of course there were, and of course she knew that there were. "I can't guarantee that, though. But you got my word that I will try not to use it anymore if I don't have too."

Owl sighed. "Guess that's the best can get from you. Okay then," he said with a small salute. "Enjoy your..." he paused as he watched the huge amalgamation of desserts in a bowl propped in front of Kushina. "Dessert. See you next time." He waved a small salute before he and his team disappeared in a Shunshin, seeing Kushina's wave from the corner of their eyes.

Her hand plopped down on the table as Kushina sighed before she said. "We and Owl's team had a mission together once. We need to bail him out of trouble when their team was changed by a bunch of missing nins the other day. They were recently promoted to ANBU, so the Old Man gave us a mission to bail them out of their tight spot. There are a lot of those nowadays you know. Missing nins I mean."

She drew a breath before she continued. "However, just like now, its activation usually means bad news, because they kind of act as our limiters. How so?" she asked the question burning at the back of Ino and Yakumo's mind by herself. "Right now, even if you didn't feel it, I have as much chakra as Shukaku, who Sakura just met," she said as she pointed towards Sakura, which caused Ino and Yakumo's eyes to point towards her, causing her to shrug and said "Shukaku's the Ichibi actually. You can say that she's Kushina-sensei's aunt of sorts."

"Wait what? How did you meet the Ichibi?" Ino asked. "I thought the Ichibi is at Suna?"

Sakura had a defeated sigh coming out of her mouth before she answered. "You'll know soon enough. You will, I'm sure."

Ignoring the looks of confusion directed towards her, Kushina resumed her explanation. "When I activated the youki, all seven tails of power that I had was activated, causing a powerful chakra spike that can be felt even much further away than where I am, especially since the purified youki is much, much more potent than regular chakra."

"Seven tails?" Ino asked. She sure discovered a lot about Kushina today, other than just the fact that they're hanyous.

"Yup. I am a Nanabi, a seven-tailed bijuu hanyou. My mother had 9, so Kyuubi, and my father had 10, a Juubi. Pretty much obvious is the fact that the more tail a bijuu had, the stronger the bijuu is," she clarified. "Anyway, back to my explanation, this makes me much stronger, since my full power can be unleashed when my cloak is up. Everything I did becomes more powerful, I heal even faster, I fight even harder, and all that. That's why it is somewhat like my limiter of sorts."

Leaning back on her awesome chair, she said "That's why the ANBU HQ panicked. The activation of our power usually means that something bad happened, and they must've felt that. To sensors, our youki felt like the sun's bright light shining right into their eyes. We drown everything that a sensor can detect, blinding them. That's why the ANBU came just now. Their sensors must've detected that chakra flare. But I had no other choice..." she sighed out. "That's the only way I could save our stuff just now... me rushing in might just make everything fall to the ground, so I just created some extra limbs from my youki to help save her and our stuff." Unsealing an oversized spoon from a seal on her hand, she dug the spoon inside the massive bowl of ice cream and fruits. "Itadakimasu," she said before she dug in the massive bowl, spooning the ice cream into her mouth without restraint. As she was munching on a piece of wafer and a banana at the same time, she gulped loudly before asking "Want some?"

"No thanks," all three answered at once, making her shrug in response as she continued to decimate the gigantic bowl of ice cream without mercy, the stupefied expression of everyone on the table ignored as she messily sucked and slurped on the mountain of frozen dessert in front of her. After some time, as she cleared the topmost portion of ice cream, she looked straight towards the three pair of eyes staring at her in shock. "What?" she asked.

"Oh, nothing," Ino said, though she never stopped her stare. How can someone eat that much ice cream alone is a thought to ponder on. Then again, from what she knew about her, she could burn all that fat very fast as she trained. Or even without training. She took a sip of her cafe latte as she watched in fascination and a bit of horror as Kushina continued her self-indulgent gorging of the tower of frozen treats in front of her.

Yakumo too watched Kushina silently as she ate the ice cream, already went halfway through the huge bowl in a matter of minutes. It's a wonder to her every time she watched or recalled about the amazing beings that her saviour and his descendant were. Not including the fact that they were a bunch of hanyous, they still had an unfathomable power in them, which radiates out even when suppressed. Not power as chakra levels or number of jutsu, but the power of emotions, the capability of letting one's emotions infecting others. Even how, she can't help but smile as she enjoyed her own happiness, feeling her happiness as her own.

Sakura just sipped her own drink calmly, already used to the weird happenings of the Uzumaki-Namikazes.

This sight was also witnessed by the petite waiter as she peeked through the cafe's doors, watching the only occupied table's occupant as they did what they did, Kushina eating, Ino and Yakumo staring at Kushina and Sakura watching all this and calmly accepting what happened. As she watched her eat, she placed a hand on the shoulder that whatever power that Kushina made came into contact with her, feeling the residual warmth that whatever strange power of Kushina's left.

Much to her own surprise, after she overcame her fear of whatever that weird flaming thing, she looked back at the spot only to see that it didn't burn anything on her. It felt warm and calming, now that she thought about it, but most importantly, it felt safe. It is nothing like the feeling her father described during the Kyuubi attack years before, having not been born yet during that time. The feeling that her strange flame created was calming and safe, like a warm embrace instead of the murderous, deathly feeling that her father described and felt as Kyuubi attacked Konoha. As she pondered this, her eyes went towards Kushina's gigantic figure, her mind in turmoil at this new discovery of hers.

Her mind immediately replayed all the warnings her father gave towards her about the family. How they're predisposed towards death and destruction. How dangerous they were. How evil they were. How they killed and killed and killed for the sake of sating their infinite bloodlust. However, the sight that she saw was unlike anything that her father said as she saw that the demon child she was told to stay away from was chatting happily with her friends, without any danger or even any trace of evil around her. She watched as she did something that not many could claim, eating through her father's massive Extra-Large Super Supreme Parfait by herself. But in the end, that was a regular human's food, nothing like what her father described them eating.

She peeked from beside the door as she watched Kushina cleaned the bowl alone, earning disbelieving looks from her friends. She supposed that it was something difficult to believe as that was a massive amount of frozen dessert and fruits and other stuff, but it's still something pretty much normal. Other than those strange flames around her and her huge size, there's nothing special about her that she could tell. "Are we wrong about them? Are we just mistaken?" she thought as she tried to make sense of what she saw the whole time, what she knew of them contrasting against what she saw.

Meanwhile, Kushina let out a loud burp as she finished her bowl, wiping her lips with a napkin that was on the table. "Damn, that was good," she said, patting her belly. Which, for all manner of measurements, didn't even look changed despite the massive amount of food that she consumed.

"What... How..." Ino stuttered out, not believing that someone could finish all that in a single helping. That was an insane amount of ice cream! Even her entire closest family, if gathered together, will be unable to eat all of that!

"Where do you store all that?!" Yakumo asked loudly with the same state of disbelief that Ino had.

"Oh, that's easy," Kushina replied back, licking her lips as she said so. "I can digest food faster than regular humans. By the time I ate the last bite, the first one's already gone and absorbed. Also, the fact that I have a much higher metabolism and larger body size means that I can eat as much food as I want and I can still keep my figure, especially when combined with my level of training."

"That's... wow," Yakumo said as Ino just nodded in awe. "People would kill for a body like yours."

"Yeah," she said sadly as she looked down for a short time. It's not quite true though. Most people would rather kill her than anything else. "Not really, though," she added in her mind. Placing a mask of fake cheerfulness, she clapped her hand. "Okay! I'm done! And that was good!" she shouted as she turned around and gave a thumbs up towards the cafe proper, a sign that she liked the parfait before she turned back towards her friends on the table and said, "So, where to next? Yakumo suggested the spa, right?"

"What?" Yakumo snapped out of her reverie over Kushina's amazing body, both figuratively and functionally before she looked towards Kushina. "Oh! Yeah! I did! Let's go!" she said.

"Wait up." Lifting a hand, Kushina called back the waiter from just now. As she walked towards the table, Kushina realised something: she looked less scared than she was before. A small smile sprouted at Kushina's lips at this. For whatever reason, the fact that someone's less scared of her is a cause to smile. "Bill please."

"C-certainly," she replied before she went back into the shop. No matter if she felt less terrified of her now, meeting her like that will definitely bring shivers to her. Taking the bill from her frowning, angry father at the counter, she went back towards the table, her steps slow even if her trembling has reduced. "I-it's 5,300 ryo, miss." She said, trying her best to smile even when it partly changed into a frown.

Without a word, Kushina took out her money pouch and immediately took out some handful of cash before paying the nervous waiter the price of the orders. But as she turned around, Kushina tugged her towards her before taking out another 5,000 ryo from her seemingly depthless pouch and handed it to her. With a bright smile on her face, she said, "Here's some tip."

The nervous waiter gets even worrier as she held the huge amount of money in her hand, the tip mixed with the payment for the bill. "T-t-the tip?" she stammered out.

"Yeah," Kushina replied, still with that same smile on her face. "That's an awesome parfait. Maybe I can try it again next time."

"U-u-um... s-s-ure." She replied with a stutter before she robotically turned around and walked towards the cafe again, her mind whirling at the huge tip she received. That tip was huge! It's almost as expensive as the food itself! Yet she just gave it away without even blinking!

Kushina watched with a smile at the waiter's disappearing back as she went back into the cafe, the humongous tip weighing heavy on her mind. Turning back around, she stood from her chair as she said, "Let's go." Placing a hand on the chair, it was resealed with a poof back into its storage space. She turned around and was ready to leave the cafe, her actions mimicked by the three. No one asked about the fact that she paid such a huge tip towards the girl, already understanding the sheer amount of cash that she had.

-A WHILE LATER-

After once again enduring a walk filled with hate glares and fearful looks which was starting to wear her down, they finally reached the spa that Ino recommended. "Here it is!" she said excitedly. "The Spring Breeze!" The Spring Breeze looked almost like a regular shop, except for the fact that it had a signboard on top of it that had a large, light green coloured writing of 'The Spring Breeze' on it. It also had glass panels for its front wall with the receptionist's counter visible behind the darkened glass as she sat, reading a novel from the way she looks.

Kushina could smell the nice aroma wafting from within the spa with every breath she took which smells strongly of herbs and aromatic oils, making her jumpy in excitement, the glares of passer-by's not affecting her enthusiasm at all. "Wow!" she exclaimed. "That smells really nice! Let's go!"

Infected with her enthusiasm, Ino smiled widely as she pushed open the glass doors to the spa. She and her mother went here just for a mother-daughter bonding time, and she fell in love with it the first time. Sure, she didn't have much of that afterwards, but she always managed to find some time to stop by and just have a good massage and a nice sauna. "Let's go, girls. Kushina can't wait to enter," she said with humour, causing the girls to laugh as they entered the spa.

The receptionist's reading was interrupted by the sight of their frequent customer entering the spa. "Ino-san!" she said in surprise. "Was not expecting you today!"

"Yeah," she said with the smile still on her face. "I had a break from everything today, so I decided to get some nice relaxation here. Is that fine?" she asked. Of course they'd be fine. There's no way they would chase her away or something.

Standing up, the receptionist then bowed before saying, "We'll be honoured to receive your patronage, Ino-san."

"Thanks," she replied. "Today I'm bringing some of my friends, though my mother is not here," she said to attract the attention of the receptionist.

"Oh? And who are they?" she asked.

"Them," she said, pointing a thumb to her back before stepping aside and letting the figure of Yakumo and Sakura enter the spa.

"Oh!" she squealed out. Having another clan member into their spa is both a reason to celebrate and a reason to despair about. If their services were good, they will definitely spread the good word around, and they'll gain even more customers! But the opposite is also true, in that if their services were poor, they could rest assured that everyone and their grandparents would know about it by the next hour. "Kurama-san! Welcome!"

"Hello!" Yakumo replied back, as jovial as the receptionist's own mood as she stepped aside the doorway.

The receptionist's happy mood slowly dropped as she saw a massive figure still standing outside the store before a huge hand pushed the door open before the massive figure entered the shop, being forced to duck down a bit due to her extreme height, clearing the glass door's edges by mere centimetres. Standing up to her full height in the store, Kushina's plain clothed, 6' plus figure was revealed to the receptionist as she stood in horror at Kushina's figure.

"T-t-the Demon Girl…" she muttered out, her entire figure shaking in fear at the sight of the giant in front of her.

Kushina just lets out a sigh at the receptionist's response. "Miss," she said in a calming voice. "I assure you that I have no intent to harm you or anything around you. I am a demon, I admit, but you have no reason to worry over me. I just wanted to follow Ino here to a spa that she said was good," Kushina said to calm down the terrified receptionist as well as she was able.

"…" No words came out of the terrified receptionist's gaping mouth as she watched Kushina trying to stop her from panicking out, her hand heading towards her shoulders to shake her out of her fear and to calm her down.

In her absolute fear and panic, she slapped Kushina's slowly encroaching hand as she screamed out "NOOOOOO!" not even caring about the fact that her hand probably hurts more than Kushina's from her slap. "GET AWAY FROM ME, YOU DEMONSPAWN!" she screeched in fear as she quickly backed away until she hit the plaster wall behind her before clinging for dear life onto the wall as she looked at Kushina in fear, her body wet with her nervous sweat from the sight of Kushina. "GET AWAY!" she shouted again, louder this time in an attempt to push Kushina away. "GET THE HELL AWAY FROM ME!"

Kushina felt a wave of unbridled sadness erupt from within her heart at the sight of the fearful teenage girl in front of her cowering in fear, a fear so palpable that she didn't need her innate emotion sensing ability to feel it. She felt it as all the glares, the looks of hate, the angry walk of the villagers, their hostile intent throughout the years, all of those snowballed within Kushina, threatening to blow up.

The festering wound in her heart slowly became bigger, threatening to spill out. Slowly, she pulled her hand back towards her before clasping it on her chest, the tears in her eyes almost flowing out as she did so. "Okay," she whispered, though everyone heard. With a clearly forced smile on her face, she said as her eyes squinted shut to prevent the tears in them from leaking out. "We'll take our leave now," she said before she turned around and pushed the glass door open. Without a word, she ducked underneath the glass door's top before bolting away.

"Sensei! Wait!" Sakura answered before she too bolted as well, channelling chakra to her muscles to increase her speed in order to chase her master.

Yakumo and Ino stood bewildered in the spa as the two disappeared in a blur towards an unknown destination. The two then looked at each other, reaching an unvoiced agreement between them before they both nodded and shot out of the spa, but not before Ino levelled an angry glare towards the still-shaking figure of the receptionist. The receptionist could be rest assured that she won't be going to her spa any more.

Meanwhile, Kushina used her immense speed and strength to bolt away from the spa, wiping her falling tears with her arm as she dashed away, barely dodging those in her way thanks to her own extreme awareness of her surroundings, ignoring the angry shout of everyone that she dodged.

"Everyone… everyone's terrified of me! I… I did nothing wrong to them, yet they're still scared of me!" she thought as she spun her body to avoid a person in front of her, her tears falling all the time. Even though she understood how difficult it is to change the minds of everyone around her, but feeling it directly and at a number of times too many to count in just a couple of hours like that is still something new to her.

Sure, she once befriended a lady at Konoha's marketplace. However, it's something sure that she haven't met her in a while. She never even knew what happened to her, never having met her for quite some time. And that much hate, coupled with the fact that she was only a couple years old even though she was a fighter that not many can compare to, not to mention the fact that she killed for missions regularly, still made all that hate harder on her no matter how. The fact remains that she's just a girl, one who lacked the finer arts of life as a human but a powerful warrior nonetheless.

Basically, her own way of being taught as a warrior before she was taught of human nature backfired on her and her quickened growth, not being able to build her mind before she had grown enough to kill.

Her tears fell as she dashed towards the most calming location in her mind, trying to let out this turmoil in her mind instead of lashing out at the villagers that she already sworn to protect. Not caring if the populace of Konoha saw her crying figure, she dodged and weaved the busy Konohan traffic with ease. Even with her emotions and mind in utter turmoil, the entirety of her trained and superhuman body still made her path through Konoha easy as she moved with speed and fluidity towards her destination.

Meanwhile, Sakura was running from the spa, Ino and Yakumo hot behind her heels. However, thanks to her new training regiments, Ino and Yakumo was forced to channel chakra to their legs in order to catch up with her speed. "Sakura! Wait up!" Ino shouted, already feeling the drain on her comparatively small chakra reserves.

Slowing down to match paces with her friends, Sakura hissed towards the two. "No time to slow down! Kushina-sensei's sad!"

Ino replied back "Why? What's wrong if she's sad?!"

"Let me ask you this, Ino," Sakura said with uncharacteristic seriousness. "Do you know why the ninjas who hated them still treated them as comrade-in-arms instead of the demons that the civilians did?"

Ino pondered her question for a while before replying. "No. Why?"

Sakura just shook her head in disappointment at her childhood friend's naivety. Sighing, she replied. "She's a bijuu, like it or not. And if a bijuu's angry, she could destroy an entire village by herself, and no one would be able to do anything about it except her father."

"Really?!" Ino asked in disbelief. From what she knew, the Uzumaki-Namikazes were pretty swell guys! They'll never go on a rampage like that!

"Hopefully they won't," Sakura said. "Now let's go to where she was before things go from bad to worse."

"Worse?"

"You don't want to know." She had a sudden thought before she amended. "Or maybe you will get to."

"What?!" Ino screamed in outrage. "What do you mean by that?!" Sakura kept hiding quite so much about them.

Instead of answering her, Sakura pushed the limits of her own body and dashed ahead, leaving Ino and Yakumo behind. "Wait up I said!" Yakumo yelled before she and Ino pumped chakra into their legs, trying to catch up to the extremely quick Sakura. Little that they realise that they've entered the high class area as they did their best to chase her, not knowing her exact destination, just following her as fast as they were able.

The two huffed in tiredness as they managed to reach where Sakura was. She was standing in front of the gate to a massive walled compound, the red with black lined spiral of the Uzumaki on it and the trademarked tri-pronged Hiraishin kunai of the Namikaze clan (which actually was a clan of just one member…) in its middle. Sakura was placing a hand on the gate, ready to open it when the still huffing Ino asked. "Sakura… what… are… we doing… here?" she said, still panting.

"…" Sakura said nothing as she kept her hand on the gates, not knowing of what to say to her friends. After a couple seconds of deliberation, this is what she ended up with. "…You'll understand." Once she finished her words, the spiral glowed blue as she channelled her chakra to the gates, unlocking them.

As the gates opened, Sakura immediately dashed inside before quickly turning back, realising that her friends haven't moved, just stood where they were, gaping at the sight of the Uzumaki-Namikaze clan compound that they never saw before. "Stop gaping!" she shouted out. "You can gape later! We need to go to Kushina-sensei!" she quickly turned before continuing her run, seeming to have much more stamina than her friends.

"Wait!" Ino cried out towards Sakura's disappearing figure before she wordlessly stared towards Yakumo who just shrugged before following Sakura away, quickly followed by a frustrated and confused Ino behind her. At this point, the two confused girls had no other choice but to follow her, the gates of the compound slamming shut behind them as they passed the walls' line.

The two ran behind Sakura as she dashed not towards the clan house, but somewhere behind it, passing beside the clan house without sparing a second glance towards the beautiful garden and huge clan compound itself. Already understanding that Sakura lived here and must've been used to the sight, they sped behind her, their mind becoming even more confused as she reached an area beyond the garden and even further behind the house itself. And once they passed an invisible boundary, they stopped with a jolt as what they felt there blew the words out of them.

A huge wave of chakra washed over the two of them, making their minds go blank as the instinctual fear of being a bleeding animal in the path of a giant predator took over their thoughts. The sheer anger laced in the massive amounts of chakra made them catatonic; almost too afraid to even breathe for fear they would be noticed. Constantly they felt smashed about by waves upon giant waves of chakra, as the pulses continued unrelenting and unstoppable.

But no matter the feeling from the chakra, the actual sight of what was causing it was worse. Both girls would tremble in fear with the sight being the stuff of their nightmares for many months to come as their stared like rabbits caught in a trap at giant seven tailed fox stomping around and roaring with unadulterated rage across the expanse of a desert far too large to even fit in the compound. The sand seemed to swirl about as if with a mind of its own, though each new roar from the fox brought about another gigantic pulse of chakra that blew away the sand like it was paper in front of a sledgehammer. A swipe of the fox's angrily swishing tail created sand tsunamis, nearly blowing them away just from sheer wind pressure.

And the coup de grace was the fact that they knew, by heart and by their soul that the raging fox was Kushina.

Unknown of the presence of her friends at the outskirts of the training grounds, Kushina roared in anger as she slammed a huge, humanlike fist on the massive wall of sand. "WHYYYYYYY?!" she roared, tears that can fill an entire room falling from her vulpine eyes as her fist hit the huge wall with all the strength of a raging typhoon, causing the hardened and compressed wall of sand to explode in a shower of sand particles. "WHYYYYYY?!" she howled towards the sky, her anguish and anger clearly heard through her howl.

Gaara, on the other hand, was floating on a cloud of sand, both hands in front of him as he willed the desert that he created for training into a gigantic wall of sand, a wall which didn't do much towards the rampaging hanyou beside the massive wall. "She's strong," he thought without emotions. Not easy recovering what you've lost since you're a child.

"Of course," Shukaku scoffed from within him. "She's a seven tailed hanyou, a couple magnitudes stronger over me. By sheer power, I had as much of a chance to beat her as a civilian trying to defeat a trained chuunin. However, due to her distraught emotions, I'm sure that we can at least restrain her." Gaara just nodded at Shukaku's words, knowing what she meant when she said that. Her defences were top notch, and her extremely malleable sand could be used to make anything, even a cage for rampaging hanyous. As the two prepared themselves to stop the girl, Gaara recalled what happened beforehand.

-FLASHBACK A COUPLE OF MINUTES AGO-

Gaara was standing on a floating cloud of sand that he conjured as he looked down towards the ground, where a desert was present instead of the huge training ground that was before, Gaara's skill remaking the terrain as he saw fit to his advantage. "It's faster than before," he tonelessly said.

"Of course," Shukaku answered. "Me inside you, working with you advances your already immense power and skill into a whole different level. Your defences are stronger, tougher, and faster to form. In fact, even if you got knocked out, I can still defend you from inside, though I cannot see much without your eyes."

Gaara wordlessly nodded at her words. He now understood just what kind of being she actually was, even as emotionless as he was. She isn't an evil being. Nowhere near evil. Proud and powerful, yet loving and kind at the same time. Only the spirit of the crazy priest stuck to her mangled her mind, making her what she was before. But now that she's back to her original state of mind, he wanted to understand her better. The being that was once called 'The Demon of the Desert' that was more that it looked.

As their training continued by Gaara trying to team up with the being in him, making even stronger construct of sand at the desert that was the training ground, the warning shout of Shukaku penetrated his concentrating mind. "Gaara! Someone's coming! It felt like Kushina-chan though…"

Wordlessly creating an eye of sand close to the man-made desert floor, he observed the oncoming Kushina who had her eyes covered by her arm for some reason. A bit confused, Gaara mentally ordered his cloud of sand to float to the ground, wanting to meet her. As he closed towards the ground, Gaara saw that Kushina stopped covering her eyes. For a split second, Gaara thought he saw tears at her eyes before he felt, rather than saw, her eyes narrow before she suddenly disappeared, only the sand dispersing around the spot where her foot was the sign that she was there.

"Gaara! Look out!"

Shukaku's words were the only warning Gaara got before a powerful blow nearly ripped his head off if not for a wall of sand intercepted the attack, the powerful punch blowing the harder-than-steel wall of sand apart like a stomped sandcastle.

Eyes wide, Gaara was forced to create another wall to block Kushina's angry rampage as he floated back to the air to prevent the rampaging Kushina from killing him. Manipulating the desert with his mind, he willed the sand to circle around the figure of Kushina before swallowing her whole and dragging her struggling figure downwards. "Sand Burial," he intoned emotionlessly, mercilessly burying her underneath tons upon tons of sand.

"Gaara!"

Shukaku's angry shout echoed through Gaara's mind, causing him to snap out of his blood rage, a rage that he didn't even feel building, having been a part of him for so long. "…Yes?" he mentally said to Shukaku.

"That's my niece you're burying there! I won't forgive you if you killed her!" she shouted out. Her sister managed to find a good mate, and now her host is going to bury her daughter underneath a desert that she helped created? Outrageous! "And hold back that blood thirst of yours!" she added as an afterthought.

She really needed to help Gaara mellow out and stop killing people randomly.

Gaara remained silent as she said that before he slowly replied. "…She's going to kill me." He never lets anyone survive an attack on him, provoked or unprovoked, so why start now?

Shukaku let out a sigh at this. Her host had the emotional range of a freaking rock! Or a pile of sand, as he was. She really, really needed to teach him about emotions. She may have had her spirit restrained by a mad priest, but she saw and felt everything that happened, making her learn of the myriad ranges of human emotions. "Don't you see that she was crying just now? There must be a reason for that!" she shouted to Gaara.

"…Really?" he said in confusion. He was never a master at human emotions, and everyone knew that.

He mentally heard Shukaku's loud sigh of defeat at his answer. He then heard her reply. "Okay… just restrain her then. There's got to be a reason why she was pissed off and was brought to tears, so just restrain her."

Nodding, Gaara prepared himself to pull Kushina back from underneath the tons of sand he buried her underneath when suddenly, the desert rumbled and shook before with a gigantic burst of sand, Kushina came out roaring from underneath her impromptu burial of sand.

"GRRROOOOOAAARGHH!" She roared her freedom to the sky in her massive demon form before she sent out a tear-filled glare towards a hovering Gaara who was eye level with her before she lets out a powerful roar towards Gaara, challenging him to a fight.

Standing up on his cloud of sand, Gaara countered back with his own glare, crossing his arms in response. No one but her father bested him, and he intended to keep it that way. Below the two, the desert writhed and churned in excitement and hunger as if it's a living being, Gaara's stronger control over his sand animating it like a gigantic living ocean.

"Don't kill her," Shukaku reminded him, not wanting to kill her sister's only daughter.

Silently nodding, Gaara's chakra spiked in preparation for his skills, ready to restrain the raging, crying hanyou in front of her, hopefully without lethal force.

-FLASHBACK ENDS-

Gaara lifted his two arms to augment his already considerable ability to manipulate his sands further before from the same wall emerged two gigantic arms of sand that grabbed the distraught hanyou with titanic strength, not wanting to let go as Shukaku helped by channelling her youki through the arms, causing huge blue veins to appear all over the gigantic arms.

However, Kushina's Astarte bloodline carried forward to her demon transformation, giving her immeasurable strength as she struggled and writhed under the powerful grip of the youki powered arms, forcing Gaara to clench his fist even more, making Kushina struggle even harder as tears kept falling from her eyes as she roared her sadness to the sky. "WHYYY?!"

Her demonic body glowed with golden chakra as she broke the arms with her strength, making the arms explode. Before the sand could even fall on the ground, Kushina rushed forwards with her massive body with her mouth open wide to eat Gaara. Shukaku's quick reaction sent a powerful fist of sand uppercutting her jaw from the desert sand.

"RAAAGH!" Kushina roared before she lifted her strangely humanoid arms and punched the sand arm again, causing the sand construct to explode again. But this time, the dispersed sand immediately gathered back together with the desert floor, creating tendrils of sand that snaked around her hind legs before they compressed and bound her to the ground.

With anger in her eyes, she took a glance towards the creeping tendril of sand already covering her hindquarters and legs before she let out a chakra powered hind kick, destroying the restraints on her. But Gaara proved to be a resourceful and quick thinking fighter as even more sand tendril erupted from the desert floor, bluish veins covering them, showing just how powerful they were as they covered Kushina's massive body before she was dragged onto the desert floor with colossal force, sending desert sand everywhere.

Amidst the battle between the two monsters, Ino and Yakumo stood gaping at the massive battle as showers of sand fell on them which they ignored, too engrossed as they were at the battle between the two. They stood in both silent horror and silent awe at the two as they watched how a person, who was somehow capable of controlling an absurd amount of sand tried to stop the rampaging hanyou.

As they were gaping at the sight, Ino suddenly said, "No… no wonder…"

Yakumo replied after a small pause, "…Yeah." Even she understood what Ino wanted to say. Kushina's power… no wonder why they were hated so much after Kurumi-san's attack. That much power… it could terrify anyone. The sheer devastation that she wrought… even whatever that guy's sand tried to do failed to stop her. No wonder Sakura said what she said before. There's not many that can stop a rampaging bijuu, and much less a well-trained one. The battle between the two monsters… this isn't a battle for them. They shouldn't even be close to one. They shouldn't even be capable of watching one. In fact, the scale of the battle was so huge that they were sure that there were only a handful of people that they knew that could stop her, and they're all Kage level at least.

The power being thrown around… it's incomprehensible to those who never saw them in action before.

Suddenly, the two watched as Kushina was dragged down underneath the living desert until only her head peeked out of the desert floor before she opened her mouth wide, chakra gathering in front of it as balls of black and white chakra gathered in front of her open mouth, the chakra that the ball emitted beyond anything the two girls ever felt in their life.

Kushina cried as she gathered all her feelings in the bijuudama, the most powerful bijuudama that she has ever charged in her life. The bijuudama contained all of her feelings; her anger, her despair, her sadness, her disappointment, all of them coalescing together with her youki into a powerful ball of destructive youki unlike anything that she ever did before.

Sakura suddenly appeared beside the two gaping girls. "Ino! Yakumo! What the hell are you doing?! That's a bijuudama! Let's get the fuck out of here!" she said before she pulled the two stunned girls away, causing them to snap out of their stupor and turned before running away, Sakura leading them away.

"Sakura! What was that?! There's tons of chakra in that ball!" Ino shouted out despite the carnage behind her, ignoring everything that her body felt as she ran as fast as she could away from that battle.

"That's a bijuudama! It's the most powerful skill a bijuu had!" Sakura glanced back as she shouted her reply, looking at both Ino's scared face and Kushina's still charging bijuudama. "At Kushina–sensei's level, it could destroy a mountain! We must get the hell away!" even she was surprised at this development. "Those stupid villagers!" she thought angrily. Everyone had their limits, and Kushina just reached hers.

"What?!" Yakumo shouted out in terror. "An entire mountain?!"

Meanwhile, Gaara was staring at the bijuudama that Kushina was charging when Shukaku screamed out in fear. "Gaara! Run! Get the fuck away from that!"

Ignoring Shukaku's uncharacteristically crass speech, Gaara immediately lifted his hands with his palm spread wide in front of him before replying. "We'll block this." Gaara replied mentally as he moved all his chakra remotely to the sand wall building in front of him, bigger than Kushina was tall in his demon form. "Your defence is absolute. Nothing can break through it."

"This is a different matter!" Shukaku countered in worry. "Just get the fuck away from here!"

Gaara ignored her before clenching his fists in front of him, creating one, if not the most powerful defensive wall he had ever created, channelling his chakra into it via a small tendril of sand that linked his sand cloud to the desert below, packing it as strong as he was able, making a defence capable of stopping the attack of an entire army. "Great Sand Barrier," he said, naming his skill at the same instant that he made it.

Kushina then swallowed the ball of youki, compressed smaller than the size of a fist. Shukaku screamed even more towards Gaara to get away, but he was adamant in his own way that her defence was impenetrable, and not many could even think about scratching it. The ball of youki was charged even more in Kushina's belly, carrying with it her emotions, stronger than a regular person and even deadlier.

And then Kushina spat the ball out, the ball of youki speeding towards Gaara's wall of sand.

BOOOOM!

The bijuudama exploded with extreme force, the powerful explosion quaking the desert floor as the entire desert seemed to rise from the powerful wave of concussive force as the gigantic explosion displaced a massive quantity of air, creating hurricane-force winds from its epicentre, blowing everything that does not get destroyed from the bijuudama away.

Ino didn't even had the time to look back as they ran from the charging bijuudama when a huge wall of wind blew towards the path of their escape, nearly causing them to fly away like leaves in a hurricane if not for a quick thinking Sakura who turned back and hastily erected a Doton: Earth Wall behind them and shouting. "Over here! Take cover!"

"What the hell was that?!" Yakumo asked as she ducked underneath the shaking wall of earth, its structure unsteady thanks to the powerful winds buffeting it.

"That was a bijuudama!" Sakura shouted back. "A bijuu's most powerful skill! Not many could defend against that!"

"Then what's going to happen to that sand guy?!" Ino asked next in worry.

As the powerful winds died down, Sakura responded slowly. "…I don't know," she said. "Kushina-sensei will never kill someone just to release her pressure, but I never saw her in such distress."

Sakura's wall crumbled to dust just as the winds stopped, letting her stand up normally, gaping at the sight in front of her. In front of her, nothing was left. Only a massive crater of sand awaited her as the clouds parted from the sheer strength that the bijuudama displayed, the air as dry as desert sands.

Sakura completely missed the fact that her friends were also standing beside her, gaping at the sheer destruction that one bijuudama caused, causing them to tremble in fear at the power that their seemingly happy-go-lucky friend had at her disposal, a power completely unmatched and absolutely dwarfed anything that their pitiful human self could wield, giving them a new, more horrifying respect at the power that a bijuu contained.

Amidst all the devastation stood Kushina as she cried while looking at the clear skies, the clouds blasted away by her bijuudama's shockwave and let out a long, mournful howl towards the sky, still in her massive demon form. She lets out another howl before slowly transforming back into her human form, her demonic features slowly receding into her body as her clothes seemed to slowly appear back on her body.

Completing her human transformation, she immediately fell to all fours, crying in sadness, her wet tears staining the sand underneath her as she sobbed and wailed. Amidst her tears and sadness, the desert that was still not blown away suddenly moved before the figure of Gaara appeared from the desert floor, the sand swirling around him as he appeared right in front of the still distraught bijuu hanyou, looking at her without emotions.

"You…" Gaara slowly said as emotionless as ever. "You're strong…" he was just about to lift his hand and crush her in his sand when Shukaku's request rang clear in his mind. Slowly he lets his hand drop to his sides, following her request.

It isn't easy to get rid of old habits anyway.

Slowly, the sobbing Kushina said, barely heard by Gaara. "I'm sorry." Gaara quirked an eyebrow ever so slightly as she dropped her hands on the sandy ground, kneeling towards Gaara in forgiveness. "Sorry for attacking you so suddenly."

"No need," Gaara replied. "I'm used to it."

"Heh," Kushina scoffed as she heard this reply, tears still falling from her eyes. She knew of Gaara's history, and she could relate to it, at least a little. "Look at me. Just because the people hated me and I cannot take it anymore, I ended up attacking you for no reason. Heh," she scoffed again. "What a weakling I am."

Gaara stared towards the kneeling Kushina before he slowly said. "…You're strong. Why don't you just kill them?"

"Gaara!" Shukaku shouted from within him in anger.

"You're strong," he said again. "Just kill them. Let them feel your anger. Let them know your hate." Gaara looked skywards before he continued. "When I was little, I killed everyone that tried to harm me. I let their blood flow to satisfy Mother, feeding them to the sands that I carry."

Kushina remained silent before she slowly answered. "…Kill them?" she said after a pause. "That's a good idea. A very good one actually." She then slowly stood to her full height, staring towards Gaara's relatively short figure. "I am strong. Stronger and more powerful than anyone in the village. Not many could challenge my skills, much less match my power." With each word, the idea actually sounded more appealing towards her. Just kill them! They can't do anything, and they're powerless to stop her. A flick of her finger could crack heads. A single punch could destroy buildings and pulp humans. A jutsu from her could turn the entire city into a wasteland. But…

"But… You know what?" Kushina replied back to his suggestion. "We… the Uzumaki-Namikazes, we are looking for peace. We wanted to change everyone so they would accept us. Killing them won't help at all, but makes things worse."

She looked towards the sky, remembering the times when she was trained by her father at the ruins of Uzushio, trying to instil in her a loving heart, even with her body of steel. A body that, when misused with a wrong mentality, would cause ruin for everyone, but will bring prosperity to those who uses it properly. She foolishly said that she was ready to face the world at that time, but only after a couple years of enduring their hatred, she blew her top. "You tried to change too, aren't you?" Kushina asked Gaara.

"…Yes," Gaara answered with a slight nod. His and the possessed Shukaku's back to back defeat taught him that he still have bonds in this world. He still had his family members. He still had his brother and his sister. Old habits were hard to break though, and he could confess to that quite easily in the future.

"She's right, you know," Shukaku chimed from within his mind as she laid her body down on the mindscape desert. "We bijuus… we've been taught by Father that peace was the greatest treasure that one could obtain. You're a step towards it, but you really need to stop your old methods of thinking. They won't help."

Not saying a word, Gaara stared back at Kushina before asking, "You… how would you find peace?"

Tapping her chin, her mood now much better after the impromptu stress relieving battle, she shrugged as she replied. "To be honest, I don't know. We're the kind of people who make stuff up as we go along, so I doubt that dad knew what he wanted to do. But I'm sure we'll achieve it sometime. Besides, we're functionally immortal by age. Time isn't a problem to us. We will achieve it, one way or another."

She looked at Gaara with a smile before saying with a wide smile on her face. "I know you're trying to change. You'll succeed, I'm sure." She then bowed from her waist. "Once again, I ask for your forgiveness." Standing up straight, she went straight to her friends again.

Gaara watched Kushina's large back as she left, his mind spinning with what she said. He understood now that he needs to be a better person to ask for people's forgiveness, but old habits were hard to remove. He wasn't even sure that he could restrain from killing those who wronged him, or forgive those who usually hated and feared him. But he's trying, and with both Shukaku's help and his family members, he hoped that he'll succeed in doing so.

"Of course you will." Gaara could feel her smile even from her prison, her confidence radiating through like the sun in a desert. "And of course I will." Nodding, Gaara went back to his previous activity, training his newfound control over his sand.

-WITH KUSHINA-

Ino and Yakumo were still gaping in awe as Kushina skipped towards them, her previous stress and anger almost completely disappeared from her now cheerful face. She stopped right in front of the two as Sakura stood to their back, watching the awestruck faces of her two friends. Suddenly Kushina bowed to the two girls and said, "I'm sorry." Standing back up to her full height, she continued. "I shouldn't just blew up like that. That was wrong of me, and I knew it. Luckily Gaara was there, and he's a strong guy," she said with a grin.

Yakumo's mouth opened and closed as words fail to form from her throat at Kushina's show of force just now. Only Ino said her mind out loud. "That was insane! I never knew you're that strong!" She knew that the entire family was damn strong no matter who, but seeing it right in front of her eyes… it's a different matter entirely. Now she completely understood what Sakura meant before. Though one thing puzzles her… "But how did Sakura knew you'd be here?"

"She knows that when I'm stressed, I tend to train myself hard, try to push myself to my breaking point if any," she replied. "So she came here, and saw me fighting Gaara. If my dad's here, I'd be trading blows with him, but since he's not, well…"

"B-b-b-but Ga-a-ara… H-h-how did h-h-he hold y-y-you b-b-back?" Yakumo stuttered out. Not that she's afraid of her, but she's just shocked at how much power she could throw around. No wonder why the civilians were afraid of them, and the ninjas treated them well. And no wonder why Sakura said that she could destroy their village easily. Because she really could. Seeing someone being able to match and suppress such a force of nature is nothing short of awe-inspiring and terrifying.

"He…" Kushina said, hesitating to tell of his identity. Besides, they're going to enter the exams anyway, so they're still going to face him, like it or not. A short while later, she finally decided on what to tell her. "He's special. That's all I could say. You'll know if you meet him later on." She then looked straight into Yakumo's terrified eyes. "You're scared of me now, Yakumo?" she said, a sad smile on her face at her reaction.

"N-n-no!" she stammered out before taking deep breaths to calm herself down. Finally slowing her rapidly beating heart, she looked straight into Kushina's eyes and said. "I-I'm not scared. It's just... the amount of power that you had... it shocked me." Drawing some air, she continued. "I... I knew that you're powerful. I've met your dad, remember? He sealed my Ido easily. I know just how good he was. I already knew that you're going to be just as good. But..." she hesitated as her mind tried to arrange her words. "But seeing that power be used in battle... that's another different matter entirely. It's so... so..."

"Terrifying? Brutal?" Kushina amended.

"No!" she shouted before her struggling mind finally came up with a good word. "So... majestic. Brilliant. It's so grand, it's on another level entirely. Nothing I knew ever came close to that one single bijuudama."

"Ehehe," Kushina said as she scratched the back of her head bashfully with a blush on her face. "I wasn't thinking right at the time, you know. I'm angry, I'm pissed and I just wanted to blow some steam. Besides, dad's could plough through mine and probably destroy me at the same time without even stopping. They're much stronger than me, you know."

Yakumo shook her head with a smile. "Your family might be the only humble ninja clan in history everywhere. Anyone else would flaunt it to high heaven."

"Really?" Kushina said with her hands on her waist.

"Really!" she said with a series of quick nods. It's good to see the usually cheerful Kushina back to her original exuberance instead of the raging sad demon that she was before. As she turned around to leave the desert that was once the training ground, she had a smile on her face. She never knew that someone could be so angry, so sad and so terrifying at the same time. It's something new to her, definitely.

The trio were stopped by Kushina with a hand on their shoulders. "Girls," she said, "Sorry again for blowing up like that. I didn't meant to, but I guess there's a limit to what I can go through, and I just reached it." She then lifted a clenched fist towards the sky, looking at it as the light of the setting sun reflected off the Mucranoid coating on her skin. "But I promise that I won't blow up like that again. It's a disgrace, it's bad, and it didn't help anything. I'll do my best to gain acceptance over the villagers, no problem. I've started, and I'm sure I can succeed."

"Of course you will. We believe you," Ino said with a smile before she looked at Yakumo. "Aren't we?"

"Yup!" Yakumo replied. "We'll be behind you at all times! You can bet on it!"

Kushina felt beads of blissful tears on her eyes as their words struck her. She never knew that words, simple words, could mean all the difference to her. She may be an amazingly powerful hanyou ninja, but human relations still elude her. Today shows just how much she missed in her short life on that aspect of human life. "Um! Thank you!" she said with a wave of her hand as the two left the training ground, intent on going back to their respective homes, the day's experience surely something to remember for the rest of their lives.

Sakura and Kushina stopped waving as their backs disappeared from their sight before Sakura looked at her sensei. "Sensei, let's go back to the house. We've done a lot today, and you nearly destroyed the compound with that bijuudama of yours. Let's consider this a day."

"Yeah, you're right," Kushina said before they both walked to the house, the setting sun behind their backs as both recounted the memories that they made today, both good and bad...

-CHAPTER END-