For 50 days, no one knows about Uzumaki Naruto's kidnapping.

"Naruto" gets up with a smile, ribs his sensei about getting ramen, goes to the market, and comes back to his apartment to sleep. He doesn't pull as many pranks, sure, but "Naruto" smiles and continues on with his life.

And if there are strange sigils in the doodles on the back of his half-completed assignments, or "Naruto" knows answers to questions he shouldn't, Iruka-sensei doesn't notice. No one does.

Rumi, aware of the way her young cousin behaved, goes about her day with pathological exuberance. Even with Uzumaki energy, Naruto is bright and loud and Rumi doesn't understand how he keeps his energy up while having ramen every night.

She runs, she pranks, she eats a worrying amount of ramen, and she watches as the Uchiha woman, Mikoto, stares at her from across the market, but does not tell a soul of her true identity.

Rumi's not paranoid; she's gone over the plan with Kosuke so often she could recite it in her sleep. Her chakra resonates with Naruto's more out of the two of them, so it made sense for the shadow clones to be from her chakra. The Sandaime was a great sensor, not as good as the Nidaime, but prolific nonetheless. The Yamanaka were also worrisome, and Rumi did not want to risk a mind walk any time soon. So Kosuke and Rumi had kept their distance, and observed their clan member's interactions. They wore henges to hide their features, and operated in the background while they got everything prepared.

She spent months tweaking her seals to carry enough chakra to supply five clones, and even longer calculating the chakra drain of static shadow clones per day in comparison to active ones. The seals needed to be placed in order, and the clones needed to be dispelled in order. The last clone would need almost 6 times the amount of chakra in its seal to last the time of the other clones as well as the average week or so of its own.

Her first tries with water clones ended up with them exploding. Earth clones were no better. A rock clone may have worked, but Rumi was far from an Iwa ninja.

Eventually, after spending weeks skulking around Konoha in a henge, she found an Anbu with fizzing electric chakra using the shadow clone, and practiced the hand seals until she got it.

No more working with elements. No more worry over a clone blowing up. No more Kosuke laughing at her in Konoha's forests.

So much work, but so worth it for Kushina's son, and so worth it for the last Uzumaki to leave Konoha.

When Sarutobi Hiruzen sits with her for ramen, she thinks of his inevitable reaction when he finds out his 'ward' is long gone, and laughs extra loudly.

The first clone lasts 13 days, the most any clone would last. Rumi purposely fails a test, and sits through Iruka-sensei's lecture on chakra natures. She pours paint into the most basic of storage seals and releases them on the Hokage monument, making sure to cover Sarutobi's face.

The Sandaime stares at her when she's dragged into the Hokage's office, with the sodden seals intact.

"Naruto, did you make these?"

Rumi rubs the back of her head. "Iruka-sensei had a couple in his office and I copied them. It was easy, 'ttebane!"

His eyes widen slightly, and Rumi wishes she could curse out loud. Who could blame her for getting Kushina and Naruto's catchphrases confused? How did Naruto even know the catchphrase anyway?

The Sandaime doesn't seem to notice her dilemma. "You still shouldn't paint the monument Naruto, that will take time and effort to take off." He frowns. "I thought you wanted to be Hokage? Hokage's can't act like this if they want to be in office."

Hokages are also supposed to be wise, old man.

Still, Rumi deflates on cue.

"You'll be cleaning the paint off after school for the next week. If it happens again, I'll have to cut your stipend so it's for food only."

If she could, she would scream. The dumb stipend was enough for a consistent diet of cup ramen, something 7-year-olds shouldn't be eating religiously if they actually wanted to grow.

"Fine, jiji," she replies, sulking. It honestly didn't matter, she didn't really have to eat as a clone, and she only got ramen to keep up appearances. If Sarutobi wants to cut the allowance, so be it. It wasn't like it would matter for long.

It's when her forehead starts to burn a bit uncomfortably that she realizes the seal is fading. She needs to go.

"Okay I'll clean the monument butIgottago bye Jiji!" She exclaims, running out of sight, and leaving paint footprints in her path.

When she gets into her apartment, she activates a small barrier seal, and dispels herself. The next clone stumbles out of the closet, dusts itself off, and makes dinner. The ramen tastes disgusting, but she forces it down. There's an Anbu watching her tonight, and she needs to keep up appearances.

(Rumi gets the memories on the boat. Kosuke glances at her from where he's holding Naruto on his shoulders, the boy staring wide-eyed at the gods Kosuke points out in the constellations. She holds up a hand, and puts down 1 finger.)

The second clone lasts only a week. She should have expected it.

Cleaning the monument had been a lot of work, and the supplies they gave her sucked. On one hand… It was her fault. On the other….well. She just didn't want to do it!

Then there was a surprise fitness test at the Academy, which she could do well in but not too well in. There was supposed to be a sparring match in a few weeks, and Rumi hoped she wasn't the clone who had to deal with that.

This time, the second clone dispels while she's in the forest. Panicked, the third clone immediately launches towards the forest, but no anbu is watching her. She breathes a sigh of relief. That was close.

(On the island, Rumi gets the memories as she's teaching her remaining clan members the shadow clone. Naruto and a few other children learn to catch fish on the beach. Now, construction can increase exponentially.)

(In Fire country, seven-year-old Uchiha Sasuke tracks his mother to the Naka, tending to a small colorful bird he's never seen before, with red and orange feathers. The bird seems to state him down. His mother smiles at the bird, feeding it some seeds.

"Mama? Is that your bird?"

Mother shakes her head, with a strange smile. "No, this bird's far from home. But it's pretty, right?"

Sasuke reaches a hand out, and runs a finger down the bird's feathers. It preens once, softly, butting Mother's hand, before flying away. Mother watches it go with bright eyes.)

Rumi's smarter with the third clone. It lasts 10 days. A mixture of meditation, diet, and luck seems to be her best bet. As long as she doesn't dispel in front of anyone, she's golden.

Rumi meditates on the Yondaime's head one morning, pensive.

There was a reason no Uzumaki sought refuge in Konoha. Mito-sama called for an Uzumaki to come to Konoha to pass on her legacy, and only the last daughter of the royal line had eligible chakra. Reluctantly, at Mito-sama's (Senju-sama, they started saying sourly) behest, the clan sent Princess Kushina to Konoha. Soon, Uzushio fought in a Second Shinobi War that wasn't theirs, because Konoha needed help, because it was Konoha's war.

And what happened? Uzushio fell. Iwa and Kiri teamed up for a slaughter. The Land of Waves and its village of Whirlpools fell to squalor. Konoha didn't send aid. Konoha didn't help the refugees.

Her mother, crushed by rubble, pushed her weakly towards Fuso-nee, told them both to run, by the Celestials, run, and don't come back!

Of the 8 daughters of Uzushio's main line, it was only Fuso that Rumi saw. Nanami, headstrong firstborn, had gone to fight, and hadn't come back. Fuso, always more of a healer than a fighter, had baby Nagato in her arms. Ren and Chiasa's corpses lay broken on the destroyed street. Etsu and Sachi had been on one of the fleeing boats that sunk with Kiri's herding. Kairi was nowhere to be found.

There was no time to bury anyone. They had to run.

They had been a small group. Fuso-nee and her healing tears and Ise and Hikaru-kun and Kosuke and others from the island, fleeing to the mainland as fast as they could. Running, running, always hungry, because Uzumaki vitality meant Uzumaki hunger, and they could not function on empty. Fuso gave most of her food to Nagato, and Ise gave most of his food to Fuso, and the entire tiny family looked like they were on their last legs.

But they were attacked. Noticeable red hair and sunken cheeks. They never could fool anyone. And Fuso-nee and Ise split off while they fled.

And so they splintered.

Fuso-nee. Ise. Hikaru-kun. One by one until the end of the Second War, when it was her and Kosuke with mastered henges and bitterness holding them together.

Still, they didn't turn to Konoha. Forget the spiral on their jackets, Uzushio lent scrolls upon scrolls of fuinjutsu, daughters of Uzushio's king to be used as brides and living weapons, and Konoha did nothing in return.

There was no word from Kushina, but rumors of Kumo kidnapping a girl with red hair from Konoha. They feared the worst. They kept pushing, taking odd jobs to make ends meet and hiding their vitality with aging henges.

When the Third war rolled around, less than a decade later, they finally trekked back to Wave Country, 24 and tired.

The place was in squalor. The towns poor and barren, the ground overharvested and brittle.

And Uzushio was wreckage and rubble. Looted for its remaining fuinjutsu. Bones and skeletons littered the ground.

In her grief, Rumi destroyed the remaining rubble of the old boats in the harbor. She set up a barrier seal, filled it with as much chakra as she could spare, and together, she and Kosuke gathered the bones to begin a mass burial.

Worship in Uzu always started at night, when the gods were in full view. The great turtle in the north, the dragon in the east, the vermillion bird in the south, and the white tiger in the west. There were so many bones that after the three weeks it took them both to gather all the bones they can find, they began burning hours beforehand, to make sure they could spread the ashes into the sea before the stars faded.

They named as many as she could, but they had been kids when they left, and lived a life on the run. So much had slipped from their minds in their time away. Kosuke wept bitterly on the shore.

But maybe the gods were watching. And after every bone had been burned, so many ashes that the sea appeared to darken from the weight of them, Rumi and Kosuke found the repository. Because their ancestors were clever beings who could create seals with half a thought, and Uzushio's legacy had dimmed, but had not died.

The repository's seal required blood. Too much, maybe—Rumi and Kosuke fainted while trying to open it. She realized that maybe the seal required so much blood because it was meant for a group. They didn't have that luxury.

They found money. Clothes, documents, fancy sealing paper, legacies that had been preserved. All 6 noble clans of Uzushio: the Uzumaki, the Nakajima, the Usui, the Takai, the Koizumi, and the Shishido.

Uzushio would never be the same. But it wouldn't die either.

(If only they were a bit faster, maybe they would have been able to catch Kushina before she died. But the news of the nine tails shook them to their core.)

They spread out, sensing for any familiar chakra. Rumi and Kosuke found a few: Uzumaki with red hair shorn to the scalp, children who had never known Uzu but had absorbed the fear of being discovered. They used Uzu's hand signs, they spoke the remaining words they knew of their dialect to find others.

Not everyone would believe. Not everyone would come. But that was okay. Rumi and Kosuke had been willing to scout as far as they could to tell people that Uzushio was far from gone.

The older people of Wave looked at their gathering with hope, offered their meager supplies and construction for the hope of protection. Uzushio began to grow, quietly, but steadily. Rumi constructed barrier seals that would only let people in with blood. Other sensors from the clan scanned each person coming into the growing village for danger. Everyone wore temporary silencing seals, forbidding them from mentioning Uzushio to others. They were paranoid, and for good reason.

It had been Kosuke's idea to check Konoha. 'Just in case someone slipped through the cracks,' he'd said. Rumi was doubtful.

"And if the mask temple is still up, maybe we can bring some back."

That made her agree.

Another point against the Sandaime was the ruined masked temple they came across on the outskirts of the village—nothing had been preserved. She tucked away the intact masks she could see (one of these could help summon the Shinigami, was Sarutobi blind?)

But the worst thing they found: a small blond-haired boy bursting with Uzumaki chakra, chakra so familiar to Kushina's that Rumi wanted to cry.

And Konoha treated him like trash.

They'd been furious. Kosuke wanted to rip him out of the village then and there. But they'd planned, and gaining Naruto's trust was worryingly easy. If they had been anyone else, Iwa or Kumo or Kiri, Naruto's life could have been in grave danger.

Like the neglect wasn't grave enough, she thought sourly.

But it had all been okay. It was okay, because Naruto was safe, and the Yondaime could curse her from the Shinigami's stomach for taking his son away from Konoha, but Naruto has been and always would be Uzushio's.

Kushina paid Uzushio's loyalty to Konoha with her freedom, her blood, and her life. Naruto had no need to do the same.

Rumi was pulled out of her musings by a crackling fire chakra.

"You know, normally Naruto is too enthusiastic to sit in one place at a time."

Uchiha Mikoto stands behind her with an indecipherable look.

"I'm hoping that by sitting on his father's head, I'm making the Hokage just a bit nervous."

Mikoto blinks. "You know?"

"What do you take me for?" Rumi snorts. "I've looked at Naruto for more than five seconds. Besides, Naruto's seal is all Uzu. Only an Uzumaki would know those seals."

Mikoto smiles. "Kushina taught Minato everything she knew."

Rumi hums, saying nothing.

"Is he safe?" The Uchiha matriarch asks. "I saw your summon."

Rumi smiles up at the rising sun. "From what I know, Boss and Kosuke reached the island a few days ago. They're trying to teach Naruto how to fish."

And Mikoto smiles, full of relief. "I'm glad."

(The clone dispels as Rumi's helping Kosuke and Naruto make dinner. Naruto didn't know what chanpuru was when he first stepped on the island, but he sure knows now. He still gazes at Rumi and Kosuke like they're the gods themselves when they give him dinner or kiss his forehead before bed. That's fine. He'll learn in time that they'll always be there for him.)

The fourth clone lasts a little longer at 11 days. The date of the sparring matches looms closer, and Rumi's not sure what to do. She'll have to dispel before then.

They have a sealing lesson in the Academy, something Rumi is marginally excited for, but it's just about how to activate and deactivate a storage seal. Rumi sighs loudly in her seat, ready for a nap, when Iruka asks her to activate the most basic of seals in front of the class.

She's supposed to be subtle, she knows. But it's been 35 days since Boss and Kosuke left with the kid and she's bored.

So she walks to the front of the class and takes some sealing paper and a brush, ignoring Iruka's squawk. She draws another barebones storage seal (as messy as possible, she's reckless but she's seen Naruto's handwriting, she's not stupid), seals the original seal inside, and yells about how she's better than everyone else, even Sasuke.

Iruka stares at her with wide eyes as she makes her way back to her seat.

The Hokage asks her about the seal the next day. He says she has real talent, that she's a prodigy.

(She's not. Even as a kid, she had been good at them, but not great, like Kushina. Want to see a real sealing prodigy? That would be Princess Kairi, who invented the whole seal-based henge so she could go to the library unimpeded. Don't need to worry about being seen if you've already put chakra in an external storage seal outside your chakra network and it's consistently applied to your body.)

Rumi reacts like she thinks Naruto would: wide eyes, and a hesitant smile, like being praised is something foreign.

Still, the Sandaime doesn't mention Uzushio once, just calls fuinjutsu a lost art, and maybe naruto could be the next fuinjutsu expert of the village, like the fourth Hokage was.

Not one mention of Kushina or Mito-sama or any Uzumaki. Rumi smiles wide with her eyes closed, so he doesn't see her anger.

To be honest, the fifth clone dispels because she's an idiot. It lasted nine days, and it might have been able to last longer.

She knows after this, Konoha will go into a frenzy. Rumi uses the rest of the money she has frivolously and decides she wants to go out with a bang.

Rumi uses the rest of Sarutobi's orphan stipend and her leftover money from Uzushio to buy massive sealing paper. The Sandaime somehow finds out and tells her not to get into trouble.

(The Sandaime is also an idiot.)

She writes five of the most basic Konoha-style storage seals she can, as blown up as possible, and seals paint, glitter, and glue into all of them. With her seals locked and loaded, she hides one in the grass by the Hokage Monument, another in training field 44, one behind the Academy, one in the Hokage Tower, and another in her apartment. When they eventually search for Naruto, they'll never be able to get it out of their clothes.

Pretending to be a seven-year-old for almost two months hasn't made her immature. She's just….sending a message.

The day of the sparring matches has come, and Rumi tried skipping class, but Iruka had found her by the park, and tried to drag her to the Academy. Wary of the teacher's grip and her own fragile lifespan, Rumi followed immediately.

Naruto is paired up with Uchiha Sasuke. She jumps up in character, ready to pretend to want to spar until they got to the training field where she would book it, but she trips.

Rumi is 37. She had just become a genin when Uzushio fell, but she had spent almost 3 decades on the run, living and fighting and surviving. She's taken bounties for A-rank missing-nin and won, she's taught herself Uzushio's invisible sealing method.

Rumi still trips over her pant leg, and lands with a thud.

She barely has time to mutter a curse when she dispels.

In Uzushio, it's morning, and the fishermen are pulling in nets heavy with grouper and tuna. There aren't enough Uzumaki for them to use their chakra chains in tandem, but the citizens of Wave make it work for their tiny, budding shinobi village.

On the western beaches lies a moderately sized home. The house of the Uzu leader, Kosuke calls it, but Rumi doesn't consider herself one. She's just a placeholder until someone from the actual royal line can take up the mantle.

Kosuke laughs at her bedhead, and they both get up to start their routine: Rumi helps oversee further construction and direct resources, while Kosuke prepares breakfast and oversees the civilians and neighboring towns. Today though, Rumi decides to follow Kosuke for just a bit longer.

Naruto hadn't believed them when they showed him his room, a small room with the best view of the ocean, just down the hall from their own space. He stared at the bed for a long minute, cataloguing the bed, the desk, and the dresser, already filled with clothes in white, orange, and Uzu blue.

He had burst into tears. Rumi panicked, Kosuke panicked, but Naruto had turned to them with wide blue eyes.

"It's really all for me?" he whispered, quieter than Rumi had ever heard him, and her heart broke. She nodded, and he ran in for a hug.

It hadn't been two months yet, and Naruto still looked so heartbreakingly unsure when Kosuke tried to pick him up from school, or Rumi showed him basic seals after dinner. But they'd get to a day where Naruto saw love as the norm, not an exception.

Kosuke knocks on Naruto's door. "If you want to eat breakfast before you leave, you better be up, hatchling. Ichirou-sensei will kill me if you're late."

The Academy hadn't been built yet, but the kids (28 of them: 9 Uzumaki, 6 Shishido, 5 Usui, 4 Takai, 3 Koizumi, 1 Nakajima, but who's counting?) gathered by the beaches on the northern shores to learn.

There's a muffled crash, followed by an almost ready, 'ttebayo! Rumi laughs.

Naruto steps out looking like one of Uzushio's sons: a light blue shirt and dark blue shorts, with his orange jacket thrown on top. It's too hot for it, but he refuses to take it off. Naruto grins widely when he sees her, jumping into her arms when she crouches down.

"Auntie! Are you eating breakfast with us today?"

She smiles, ruffling his hair when she pulls back. "Sure thing." She pushes him gently towards the bathroom. "But brush your teeth first!"

Naruto runs off to brush, and Kosuke smiles as he leaves.

"How's he doing?" Rumi asks as they walk to the kitchen. Kosuke shrugs.

"He's a bit behind for his age, but Ichirou's trying to get everyone on the same level, so it's nothing too worrisome." Kosuke radiates a quiet pride as he grabs juice for Naruto, and pours tea for the both of them. "Naruto's doing well with the foundations of seals already."

Today Kosuke's made miso. Rumi smiles as she tucks in.

"Kushina would be pro—"

Memories rush her: the clone dispelled in front of a classroom of children, right in front of the instructor. The last clone.

Kosuke takes a spoonful of miso, deceptively relaxed. "What is it?"

Rumi breathes out. It's unfortunate, untimed, but it was going to happen sometime.

"That's five. Beware the falling leaves," Rumi murmurs. Kosuke breathes out, and a hand snakes around Naruto's juice to wrap around her own. His lips quirk to form her one of her favorite smiles. And just like that, it was like they were 15 again, running alone through the backwoods of countries to stay alive under different names and faces.

"From what we saw of Konoha, they'll never know where to look. Any tracks we might have left are long gone. They'll check the other four great nations before they even think of the smaller ones." His smile turned jagged. "And why would they even check a poor wartorn country like Wave?"

"And if they do come?" Rumi asks quietly. She can hear Naruto's footsteps from down the hall. They'd have to change subjects soon.

Kosuke's gray eyes burn. "Then let them come. We're more than ready."

The village is quiet, and she doesn't trust it.

There's always something happening here—politics of the village irritated her to no end, because there was never a moment of rest, never a moment where she felt like she could let down her guard. She had no allies here to speak of, and she had no friends.

Then again, she thought, she'd been running her entire life, ever since Uzushio crumbled into the sea and she'd left her sisters' corpses in the rubble.

It's difficult to remember the curve of Nanami nee-san's face, or if Fuso-nee's eyes were grey or dark blue, if Etsu loved seashells or turtles, or Sachi's favorite food. She couldn't remember if it was Ren or Chiasa that started saying 'dattebane', and how all her sisters had joined in.

Most of all, she could barely remember Kushina, the only little sister she'd had. But she'd been gone even before Uzushio had been reduced to rubble.

She'd run with Akihito, four eyes Akihito, Kushina used to call him, and they'd survived by hiding in the mountains. When the third war had found them, they hid in the farthest valleys they could reach.

It was four eyes Akihito who smiled at her and told her he'd loved her as long as he had known her. It was four eyes Akihito who touched the swell of her stomach months later and whispered that he'd love their child no matter what. It was four eyes Akihito who died because his vision was so poor that he walked right into warfare.

Now everyone was dead. There was no one left in the world that she knew from her youth, and everyone else had already changed their name, cut their hair, and distanced themselves from anything Uzu. She herself had cut her hair because dyes couldn't cover Uzumaki red no matter how much she tried, and wore henges for the latter part of her life.

It didn't matter though, because when she'd had her baby, she had to stop running. She found Kusa, and surrendered her skin and her life to keep her daughter safe.

And so they took. Bite after bite after bite.

She doesn't look in the mirror anymore, but she's aged. She remembers her mother, nearly 60, who looked like another one of her sisters. Her father, tall and proud with spiky red hair down to his knees, who looked like he was in his thirties.

She cannot look at the lines on her face. She can't look at the paltry seals of this village. She doesn't even use her last name anymore—How can she say she's Uzumaki when she's hidden from it most of her life?

Maybe it would have been easier if she had had Fuso-nee's healing tears. She'd cried long and often after Uzu fell, and in the second and third wars. Now she's simply exhausted. She sleeps whenever she can, in her small disheveled home. Before, she would use her chains to touch her chakra to her baby's, an Uzu tradition she never forgot.

(She remembers feeling Kushina's burbling chakra, so different from her sisters, too expansive and wide for her age. She remembers how that chakra raged in desolation when Konoha ripped her away.)

But now she's tired. And she worries that very soon, when they call her into the hospital, she will lay down and let them taketaketake until there's nothing left.

She's more than ready for her life to end. She wants her mother, and her sisters, and her father. She wants Akihito's loud laugh and hardened hands. She wants the endless waves of Uzushio, the somin chanpuru Nanami used to make, the endless view of the ocean from Shurijo mansion, her home.

But her baby…

Her little girl, who's never known Uzu, who's never known anything but wariness and fear. Her little girl, who looks at her own red hair with trepidation when they walk outside.

She looks at her sleeping daughter, her unmarked skin, and despairs. Because she's ready to die, but she can't leave her daughter trapped here for a life of servitude.

There's been a recent battle (there's always a battle), and Zosui will be back in the morning to escort her away. But she remembers the rumours she's heard in neighboring towns: the red-haired people who whispered of Uzushio rising one more time. The glimpses of chakra that feel so familiar, so similar to what she's known.

She hasn't hoped in a long time, but for her daughter, she will. One more time, she will rise to the name Uzumaki, be the princess she was supposed to be.

One more time, she will be Kairi.

Kairi gathers their meager supplies, the little money she's saved over time, and draws her first seal in decades. It comes back to her like breathing as her fingers fly over the sealing paper.

Money, sealed. Food, sealed. Water, sealed. Clothes, sealed.

She starts another seal with a small smile, remembering how Kushina and her cousin Rumi wowed at the technique. The seal based henge will not last long, she thinks with a bitter smile. Her life force and chakra have already faded so much over the past decade or so of continuously 'working' at the hospital. She can't store enough chakra for a long-lasting henge like she used to.

She makes one for herself, one for her daughter. Kairi pauses once more on her daughter's form.

They're valuable, in the way Uzumaki blood and brains and chakra have always been. Kusa's hospital doesn't have the robust medical jutsu of the other nations like Suna or Konoha. If Kusa finds out they've run, they will chase after them.

But she has to, for the sake of her daughter. To keep her skin unmarked, after already taking so much of her childhood.

For a moment, Kairi remembers Akihito's head on her stomach, listening to their daughter kick and staring at her with adoring eyes.

If she's a girl, Akihito says, glasses askew, I want to name her Karin. After the most beautiful woman I know.

She shakes Karin, watches with a small nostalgic smile as the girl pats around herself blindly for her glasses, before putting them on.

"Karin-chan," Kairi whispers with barely a tremor, "Do you want to go on an adventure with me?"