Kushina and Minato – A Love Story

Chapter 3

Aftermath

Author's Note: Happy Fourth of July! For my fine readers in other countries, I know it is July 2. The 4th is what we call our Independence day in America. So please read and enjoy in a spirit of freedom for all people, Starshipw.

July 22 – What are the limits of a man? How much pain and heartache can he absorb before losing his core to passion or revenge? From the first time I saw Flash standing on top of that silly toad I have considered him the ideal shinobi; impassioned yet restrained, powerful but caring, dignified and goofy, the one man who makes my insides flutter and yearn to have a baby, for you Aiji. To someday have a child with Minato by my side... But now he has been pushed too far. The loss is too staggering. Can he find his way back to me?

Blackness, stark and unrelenting. The cold was more than bone-deep. The chill reached clear to the soul. No fire, no fur, no tub of steaming water could ever reach those depths frozen for so many ages as they traveled from the Hokage's office to... where she didn't know. Kushina analyzed her situation dispassionately. Previously when traveling with Minato by body flicker there had only been a stomach churning wrench and twist, though no perceptible passage of time. Except, earlier in the day it seemed that the trip from the training ground to his cottage had been different. There had been a barely noticeable duration, though no more than that of passing through a doorway at full run.

Was time really passing? She knew that she was not breathing, nor did she feel any need to. She checked and found no evidence of a heartbeat. Her stomach and inner ears which had been twisted in nauseating loops felt no urge to rebel. She could not feel Minato's arm, but knew instinctively that he was still near.

Daikoku Fueno had lectured them about the latest scientific findings. Apparently even light traveled through space at a finite though unimaginable velocity. Even stranger, if you went that fast time would slow down, but time had seemed to speed up for her. If they were not actually traversing normal space why should distance matter at all? None of it made any more sense than the explanation about how the appearance of demons in the world inhibited the long distance propagation of radio waves and transmission of electrical power. Ancient sources are mute on the subject.

There was one possibility which she determined it was better not to concern herself over for the next decade or so. If she had thrown Flash off, if he missed whichever seal he was aiming for, they might spend eternity is this cold limbo, together yet never able to touch each other. She could never hold him or even tell him that she was sorry for killing them.

It seemed eons later when she noticed a glow, slowly approaching. Shining runes, rippling as if seen through water, rushed at her and resolved into a sutra attached to a spear.

… … …

They landed in the middle of the river on their hands and knees. Kushina's sea training helped her swallow her nausea, but it was too much for Minato. She recognized the battlefield where they had recently fought Hanzou and the one summoning tag beneath the creek which no one had bothered to recover. There was no time to voice her surprise. Minato was up and running without even bothering to pause and wipe the vomit from his mouth.

She followed him, matching stride for stride as long as he kept to the river, but as soon as he turned to the bank he was gone. There should be no problem following because he was headed straight toward the Leaf camp. She burst past the sentries and spied an old comrade. "Bekkou, you're OK."

"Otemba! Yeh, me and two other ANBU were still on sick call when Danzou left on that ill-fated mission. Did the Hokage send you after the Captain? You know, he's going to exterminate Hanzou of the Rain."

"Right, more or less. I need to stop him from destroying the Rain treaty or getting himself killed."

"I'll send word." Soon the warnings spread by hawk and semaphore, byakugan and genjutsu, and all along the path there were ninjas with food and water or pointing to shortcuts or water routes where she was quicker. Some paced her for short distances passing on the latest news. She never even looked back as she zipped through a border crossing where Hizashi Hyuuga stood stoically being berated by an enraged Rain captain. From that point on Minato's path was easy to follow as a trail of scattered weaponry and unconscious Rain-nin.

She was nearly to the Rain Village when one young teen stood in the road bravely blocking her way. He threw his kunai but she caught it and grabbed him by the vest lifting his feet off the ground. "Where is Hanzou?

He whimpered, "I may only be a genin but I'll never betray the Great Leader."

"Listen you, don't you know who I am? I am Otemba of the Leaf. What's your name?"

"Th-the one w-who fought the L-leader with the Ye-yellow Flash and the Hatake! I... Ryuusui."

"That's better. Now Ryuusui, if you want to save your Great Leader, I need to get to him before Minato does. Take me there."

In actuality there was little need for a guide. They followed a trail of damaged buildings and unconscious ninjas as they approached the capital. When they reached the city outskirts the genin escaped, screaming for help. Kushina let him go with no regrets. She was intimately familiar with the back alleys of this Village, having spent one steamy August undercover as a street kid hunting for a serial killer.

She wove her way through the stalls of the bazaar followed by the crashes of enemy ninja trying to barge their way past. She spied a familiar face. The Auntie at the baker's stand had sometimes let her have some two-day old bread if she swept and cleaned outside the stall. She grabbed a couple of fruit dumplings off the counter and left a two hundred ryo coin spinning in their place. She savored the warm appley goodness on the run as she considered her next move.

It was more likely that Hanzou was in his rooms in the tallest tower in the village than that he would be in the hospital. Both security and rumor control would be easier that way. Luckily she knew a shortcut to the center of town because the pursuers were starting to close in. It would be a crying shame if she was forced to drop her snack so that she could fight them off. She jumped off the next bridge and was around the bend of the river before anyone could follow.

The Rain capital's sewers were an engineering marvel. Designed to handle storms over 300 days a year, they formed a giant web beneath the streets completely unknown except to the engineers who kept them in repair and the cast off children who made them their homes. It wasn't a bad place to live as sewers went, since the human waste was flushed out on a regular basis and there were certain drains which were known to come from roof downspouts and could be safely used for cold showers and fresh water. Kushina had explored only a tiny section of the system, but she had been certain to memorize a direct path downtown against the possibility of a future invasion.

As she sped down the center channel of the main sewer she gave a shrill warbling whistle and leaped up a metal ladder where a teenage boy in a discarded chunin vest stood watch with a younger boy wearing a helmet much too big for his head. The teen hesitated, smart enough not to attack a ninja and confused because she knew the pass code. The thousand ryo she offered disappeared into his vest. It would cost him 20 percent for a fence to turn it into Rain currency, but it was more money than he had at one time since he filched a ring some old biddy had carelessly set on a counter.

The younger boy grabbed the half apple dumpling she held out and ran off, guard duty forgotten. Two pair of big round eyes focused on the sweet bean paste dumpling. Hunger overcame caution and a little brown eyed, purple haired girl stepped out of the shadows with her hand extended. The grimy toddler hanging onto her skirt wore only a T-shirt, toilet training apparently not being a high priority when living in a sewer. Kushina noted that when the girl tore the pastry in two that the toddler got the bigger half.

She turned to the teen, "Buck, heat springing ya. Yammer e'ryone hole up. Owe ya solid."

"Nada. Mouse, shelter." While he began tapping code on a pipe, the little girl called Mouse stuck her tongue out the side of her mouth as she concentrated. When she placed her hands on the floor a rock wall rose up and sealed the doorway. Kushina shook her head as she ran down the passageway. There was too much raw talent there to allow it to languish in filth. Maybe she couldn't salvage all the lost children, but somehow she would find a way to rescue Mouse and her brother.

The water was rising by the time she came to the alley where she planned to exit the sewers. She emerged into a light rain and the sound of running feet. As she feared, the government tower was completely surrounded by Rain-nin. As she studied the situation, Minato exited the front door and at a command, hundreds of arms targeted him. She felt a surge of chakra and all of the weapons missed. She decided to step in before a second volley could be launched. At her handsigns the puddles on the street rose into tidal waves and cleared a path. She ran to Minato before anyone could identify her as the threat.

"Flash - Hanzou? You didn't, did you?"

Vacantly he shook his head. "He's laying there in a coma. Did you know, they lost twice as many men as we did. What can I do to them that they haven't already done to themselves? So where do I go to get justice for my ANBU? Danzou has already paid with an arm and his disgrace. Tell me Red, who is left to punish but me? They were my responsibility and I left them in the hands of a madman while I ran off to play games."

She grabbed him by the vest and shook him until recognition showed in his eyes. "You aren't blaming this on me! You earned your time off. No man can be everywhere at once and no psyche can stand the unrelieved pressure we receive from death and destruction without cracking if we don't take our leaves. You know Danzou is too high up to stop. If it hadn't been your ANBU it would have been somebody else's army battalion. In his mind it was a straight forward mission. A little bit of betrayal and we turn the Rain into allies. If you didn't learn it as a genin it is past time you learned it now. We can't save everyone. We fight to protect all our precious people as hard as we can and properly mourn those we lose. If you can't deal with that then we will find you a desk job where you can file papers all day long and never have to look the people in the face that you can no longer save."

There were tears running down her cheeks and his body was trembling all over. "I can't do it any more. To give my heart to these men and kunoichi only to have some fool destroy it all... I can't..."

She hugged him tightly, "I know baby. It will be alright."

A tall thin man standing on a large ornamental pond interrupted them. "Surrender, Leaf invaders. Word has come down that your assassination attempt has failed. Lay down your weapons now and you will live until the Leader recovers sufficiently to pass judgment on you."

Kushina nodded, "You are Kandachi, Hanzou-sama's aide, so you know who we are and you know that if we had evil intent that this man could have caused scores of casualties. It would be best for all concerned to place this week's unfortunate incidents behind us. Please step aside and we will leave peaceably."

"Are you fools? Entering the Rain Country and attacking ninjas are crimes. Now you will pay. Summoning Conch King." A giant shell appeared on the pond beneath Kandachi. "Capture them. Conch Whip!"

Thin tendrils snapped at them from an opening in the shell, but Kushina was faster. Water shuriken sliced through the waving ropes. The kunoichi shook the rain from her scarlet hair. "I prefer not to injure summons when possible. It is not necessary for them to be hurt in petty human squabbles."

"Don't you dare look down on the Rain Country. Both men and beasts are prepared to give our lives for Leader Hanzou. You refuse to surrender, then die. Conch Spear!" Spears shot out of the giant shell, joining a rain of kunai and shuriken. Kushina formed a half dome which deflected everything but two spears which protruded through the water wall.

"Flash, snap out of it. If this keeps up I'll have to kill someone to keep us from being destroyed." She sent a tsunami at the attackers, but a group of water users repelled it back at her, destroying the dome and knocking them down. She got up boiling mad. "Namikazi, stop sulking and wake up." Her punch sent him flying, sending huge cracks up the side of the tower he smashed into. "I don't know what that gray mist is and I don't need to find out. I want to go home."

"Home?" The mist rolled over them.

"Yes, Home, Now."

When the mist cleared, Kandachi found no one paralyzed by his genjutsu.

… … …

This time she was prepared for the eternal void. It was actually comforting to think that time had stopped for the rest of the world and in that moment none of her friends could be frightened or in pain. The pain was all in Minato's heart and it was up to her to heal him. What he had said back in the Rain Village was true. He could not go back to ANBU after what had happened to troops he thought of as brothers and sisters and treated like his children. Well, the good thing about eternity, it gave a master strategist plenty of time to plot her next moves.

They emerged once again before the portrait of Minato's parents. This time he avoided motion sickness, whether because his body had adjusted or because it no longer cared enough to rebel she couldn't tell, but he didn't resist when she led him by the hand upstairs to the bathroom. She stripped off their soggy uniforms and stuck him in a hot bath until he warmed back up. She got him out and set him on a stool while she sudsed him up and rinsed him with buckets of warm water. She wrapped him in a large fluffy towel while she quickly performed her own ablutions. She sighed. Her hair took forever to dry naturally, but delays were unhelpful so she used jutsu to strip the bathwater from her body. She would pay tomorrow combing out tangles, but Flash came first.

She led him to his bed and lay down beside him. Just one more sad factor. Her first time in her lover's bed in his own home and it couldn't be a joyous romp like they had shared by the waterfall. No, it was more like the time two years before when she had offered up the heat of her naked body to keep him from freezing to death in an icy badger den. Whatever he needed, whether heat or sex or protection or just comfort, she was there to give him.

They lay there silently. He had not spoken since returning to Konoha. She thought that he had drifted off to an exhausted sleep, but with her breasts pressed against his broad back and her arm on his chest she could feel the soundless sobs wracking his body.

… … …

Minato Namikaze awoke the next morning to a feeling of loss, not from sorrow which had subsided to a memory of grief, but from something important missing from his room. He rolled over and discovered she was gone. It was probably better this way. She could never respect him after seeing the way he had been paralyzed by emotion, unable to function. It was better if she left now honestly. If she stayed with him out of pity she would just end up hating him.

Depression is a powerful emotion, but one thing which can overcome its inertia is a full bladder. He struggled out of bed, then stopped. Setting on a side table was a bowl of rice and a small pot of tea heating over a candle. Hope blazed in his heart. She made him breakfast before she left. Maybe she didn't totally hate him. Surprisingly he had an appetite, at least for food made by Kushina. He was scraping the last grains up when she reentered his room.

"You aren't dressed yet. You will be late for your new assignment."

"Assignment? But I have to see the Hokage to submit my resignation."

"Unnecessary. I already have your transfer papers."

He was completely confused. "What kind of transfer?"

"The Third was concerned that none of his candidates for the next Hokage had sensei experience. Unfortunately, all the genin teams have already been assigned this year. So you will be Captain of a Special Ops chunin team made of underage prodigies." She smiled warmly at the expression on his face. If she knew anything about those three brats, there was no way he would have any time left to brood over his loss.

Next: Chapter 4

Ichiraku Ramen Closes

Aiji – Beloved child