"You ready?" Naruto asked Karin as the two sat cross-legged across from each other in a vacant lot within the ruins of Uzu.
"Mhm," she responded with a nod, gripping the kunai in her hand in preparation.
With only a nod in return, Naruto struck with a kunai of his own, clashing with Karin's as the two met in a power struggle. While the two weapons were locked in a stalemate, silver chains snaked out of Naruto's back and whipped around him to strike at Karin, but golden chains shot out to intercept each attempt. This pattern kept up; Naruto kept Karin's hands busy with the kunai struggle while forcing her to multitask by deflecting the progressively numerous chain strikes. It was both an exercise in her mental acuity as well as the use of her chains even if hers and Naruto's were fundamentally different.
Karin's chains were less offensive in nature than Naruto's; it was in the name. Karin had Adamantine Sealing Chains, whereas Naruto had Adamantine Attacking Chains. All that really meant was that Naruto's chains were great for attacking and pulverizing things, while Karin's chains were better for sealing and restraining, particularly when it came to nullifying chakra. Even so, they could still be weaponized, hence Naruto training her use of them defensively.
Up until now, Naruto had simply assumed that his chains were just an incomplete version of her own, but that notion was finally dispelled upon reading through the gold mine of scrolls they stumbled upon in the vault. Apparently, the Attacking Chains weren't incomplete versions of the Sealing Chains, they were just a different variety entirely, bred from a different manifestation of the "special" Uzumaki chakra. It led Naruto to wonder just how many different kinds of chains there were (if there even were other varieties at all), but none of the scrolls he perused gave him a definitive answer to that.
However, what his research did actually dig up was that not everyone awakened the chains to begin with, which tracked because Nagato had indicated in the past that he never manifested chains, nor had his parents to his knowledge. Naruto was also sure that Tayuya would know if she was capable of anything of the sort, whether via finding out herself or through Orochimaru experimenting on her.
There was another person that Naruto knew could use them, but he ruthlessly squashed that thought the second it appeared. Now wasn't the time.
Setting his mind back on the training at hand, he noticed his kunai was slowly pushing Karin's back, but her chains were batting his away even more ferociously.
"Your focus is wavering," Naruto softly but firmly said, yanking her attention back to his gaze. "Stay with me."
Karin was trying; she really was. She could keep his kunai at bay, but one of his chains would slip past her defenses and nick her every so often. Conversely, keeping his chains at bay wasn't too difficult if she kept on her toes, but she'd begin to lose the power struggle as time wore on. Naruto made it out to be that she was only focusing on two things, but that was so misleading once 5 chains were striking at her at once. It was like looking to her left and her right at the same time.
Wait…
"You're thinking of something," Naruto noted with a smirk. "What've you got cooking up there?"
Karin concentrated for a moment, doing her best to keep any chains from tagging her while molding her chakra through a half-ram seal. Poofing into existence behind her was a shadow clone that immediately summoned her own chains to meet Naruto's onslaught, allowing the original to take a breath and focus squarely on keeping her master's kunai away.
"Interesting," Naruto complimented with a genuine smile, and Karin briefly felt a spark of warmth at the acknowledgment.
That warmth was quickly smothered when her clone gurgled and poofed away, and the memory of the clone getting impaled through the gut from behind by a shadow clone of Naruto invaded her brain, snapping her focus completely and releasing the kunai from her hand.
"I can do that, too," Naruto snickered as Karin took a deep breath. "Great attempt, though. You're thinking outside the box."
"How do you deal with the mental feedback?" Karin asked, slowly regaining her composure. "The phantom feeling of being stabbed and literally dying… I couldn't imagine dealing with that as often as you do."
Naruto shrugged. "Once you have enough existential crises when a shadow clone is killed, you eventually just become numb to it."
Karin stared at him for a silent few seconds. "That doesn't sound healthy, Naruto."
"Exactly what about me screams 'mentally sound'?"
"But still..."
Naruto smiled and ruffled her hair, eliciting an annoyed huff from her. "I appreciate your concern, Karin. I really do. You don't have to worry about me, though."
The annoyance in Karin's eyes vanished, and her expression degraded into something Naruto couldn't quite parse before she looked down. "…I can't help but worry sometimes. You're all I have left, and I can't bear the thought of losing anyone else."
Mild confusion and even more concern poured into Naruto's being. "Where's all this coming from?"
"You know that I can feel how uncomfortable you've been since we got here…" Karin muttered, and Naruto motioned for her to continue. "Is being here bothering you?"
Naruto momentarily considered playing dumb to avoid the conversation, but one look at her knowing, red gaze made him give in with a sigh. "It's not that it's bothering me, it's just…"
Naruto took another breath after trailing off. "I spent the first 8 years of my life alone and surrounded by people who wanted nothing to do with me. It kinda fucked me up. Then, I find out that I actually come from a clan… and then I find out that they're dead, or at least mostly dead. Being here in the homeland of the clan just makes me think about what could've been, y'know?"
Naruto stared up at the overcast sky, the crashing of the seas surrounding them faintly filling the unnatural silence of the ruins. Karin didn't speak, instead allowing him to get as much off his chest as necessary. While he wasn't emotionally closed off, he was still reluctant to delve into certain subjects, chief among them being the specifics of his time in Konoha and his personal connection with the Uzumaki Clan. She'd allow him to open up at his own pace.
"If the clan wasn't wiped out," Naruto continued in a somewhat morose tone, "maybe I wouldn't have been so alone. Even if I kept my orphaned jinchuriki status, maybe I could've had people to share that burden with…"
An unsure silence followed Naruto trailing off, and he fiddled with his hands while struggling to present his thoughts in a coherent manner. His troubled silence was interrupted when Karin reached over and placed her hand on his head, and he sent her a quizzical stare as she lightly ruffled his blonde locks.
"Uh, what are you doing?" Naruto questioned Karin, who was steadily growing as red as her hair.
"I- well," she stammered before taking a deep breath and getting a grip. "Ms. Konan does this to you sometimes, and you do it to me whenever I get really anxious, so I figured it would help…"
"Not saying it isn't," Naruto snorted, some levity returning to him. "It just caught me way off guard is all."
"…Should I continue?" Karin hesitantly asked with her hand still nestled in his hair.
"Do you want to?" Naruto replied with a quirked eyebrow.
Karin's face was beet red at this point. "I don't know… I'm making this awkward, aren't I?"
"A little bit, yeah," Naruto chuckled, and Karin quickly retreated into her cloak with a groan. "It's really not a big deal."
"I'm being an awkward mess and ruining your moment of vulnerability," she chastised herself from within her cloak.
Naruto's chuckling became genuine laughter, and he reached into her cloak to ruffle her hair, much to her growing chagrin. "You're an awkward mess all of the time, Karin. I'm used to it."
"Shut up," she groaned.
"Good fucking grief, will you two just fuck and get it over with already?"
Their gazes snapped in the direction of the voice to see an annoyed Tayuya glaring at them with her arms folded. Karin was a nuclear shade of red at this point and was dying of pure mortification. Naruto, on the other hand, simply laughed even harder.
"Sorry, sorry," Naruto apologized, realizing that Tayuya had finished the training she had been doing with his clones. "I was just waxing poetic about how things could've been if the clan was still around when I was younger."
"Yeah, and if my aunt had a cock, she'd be my uncle," Tayuya retorted with an unimpressed glare. "Who gives a fuck about what could've been? I pegged you for someone who focuses on what's actually in front of you."
That took Naruto completely by surprise. That was a surprisingly thoughtful take from the generally cantankerous girl. Karin was still turtling in her cloak, so all Naruto could do was mutter a low, "I guess you're right," in response.
Tayuya huffed dismissively. "Anyway, shithead, your dumbass clones all dispelled. Couldn't handle the illusions."
As if to emphasize her point, a shadow clone stumbled into the clearing beside Tayuya.
"Sorry, boss, her genjutsu is too effective," the clone slurred before falling to the ground and popping.
Naruto snorted, and he stood up, finally drawing the top of Karin's head out of her cloak to view what was going on. "Alright, your warmup is over, so I guess it's time to shape up your taijutsu. You come, too, Karin. I'll take you both on at once."
Phrasing aside, Karin was grateful at the excuse to move on from Tayuya's interruption, and she quickly scurried to her feet and followed behind the other two Uzumakis. Meanwhile, Naruto sent Tayuya a thankful smile.
"Thanks for that earlier," he said genuinely, then his smile became a playful smirk. "I never pegged you to be the insightful type."
Tayuya snorted and threw him her own smirk. "Yeah, well, I'm not just a pretty face."
"Hn, even that's debatable…"
"The fuck was that?!"
The Uzumaki Trio's remaining time in the ruins of Uzu was spent doing a few things. When Naruto's two students weren't getting beaten into the dirt backed by the soundtrack of the ocean, they were searching for anything else of note that might have been hiding amongst the wreckage yet to be discovered. The search didn't yield very much; anything that could have been pilfered was already taken or likely destroyed to keep out of enemy hands, so that merely left them with what they found in the vault, which wasn't an insignificant haul in the slightest.
He first came across clan records. Reading about the formation of the settlement during the Warring States Period confirmed what Nagato had explained to Tayuya when they brought her to Ame, but it shed light on many other things, as well. The official founding of the shinobi village with Ashina Uzumaki at the helm was detailed, exploring the man's exceptional battle prowess and political navigation that landed a strong, tangible alliance with the Senju Clan (and Konoha by extension) through the marriage of Mito and Hashirama.
His curiosity about what Mito got up to in Konoha led him down a rabbit hole. Uzu had apparently been keeping tabs on her from afar, which was expected. There were general notes on her status and well-being from the point in which she married Hashirama all the way until her later years, and Naruto promptly extricated himself from that rabbit hole when he got to the part about sending a tribute to Konoha to become the next vessel for the Kyubi upon Mito's death.
There were substantially fewer jutsu scrolls than he had anticipated. He wasn't expecting something akin to the Scroll of Seals, but he figured there would be at least a few high level ninjutsu or genjutsu documented, and there were, but they weren't anything he wasn't already sort of familiar with. He did, however, see an interesting footnote about the clan's attempted connection to the Shinigami via enchanted oni masks. There was apparently a shrine near Konoha where the masks were housed in case of a "sudden apocalypse." He'd have to investigate that at some point.
The fuinjutsu scrolls were a lot more plentiful, but the lion's share of them were chakra theory and notes about experimental seals that saw only varying degrees of success. One in particular was a concept for a prisoner seal that would not only seal the target's chakra but also slowly inject biju chakra into the victim, essentially dooming them to a lengthy, torturous demise from the inside-out. Exactly how the fuck someone would even harvest raw biju chakra to collect within a seal was absolutely beyond him, and the technical logistics of that kind of seal were even more confounding, but Naruto decided to table it and revisit it another day for the sake of his sanity. These motherfuckers were truly built different; he could certainly see why whoever sealed off the vault chose to preserve all of these scrolls rather than destroy them.
"Hey, blondie!"
Naruto was snapped out of his musings at Tayuya's call, and he turned his head to her approaching form. "What is it?"
"The hell's eating you?" she bluntly inquired.
"Huh?"
"Don't play dumb, shithead. You've looked constipated the entire time we've been here. I noticed it when we first got here, but I didn't say anything because I figured you'd work it out on your own. You haven't, though, so the hell's your problem?"
Now, Naruto had spent enough time with Tayuya to learn that she was an incredibly straightforward person, and when combined with a foul mouth and a proud lack of tact, you get genuine concern chauffeured by very abrasive phrasing. He expected something of the sort from her if she was ever going to ask anyone about their problems for whatever reason. Prickly but not inherently malicious probing was certainly on-brand for Tayuya.
On the other hand, her abrasive manner of asking could also just be her being a cunt for the sake of it. That would be very on-brand for her, as well. In any event, she asked him a question, and she was waiting impatiently with her arms crossed for him to give her an answer. For a long moment, Naruto mulled over if he even wanted to answer her question at all or simply brush it off and cut the reprieve between sparring sessions short. However, the option was seemingly taken out of his hands when an impatient Tayuya pulled out the bamboo flute she found in the vault.
"If you don't spill, I'm gonna make you," she warned with a narrowed gaze, placing her flute in position to cast a horrible genjutsu on him.
Amused and deciding to indulge her, Naruto turned to face Tayuya fully. "I'd genuinely love to see you try it."
"You're already in one, dipshit."
That amusement vanished when Tayuya's voice echoed in his ear and 3 paper kunai were pointed at him, two at each temple and one at his throat, all curtesy of shadow clones of Karin. Then, the Tayuya he was speaking to disintegrated into dust, and the real Tayuya faded into view beside him with a smug smirk. Glancing at the clones (and presumably the real Karin, as well) surrounding him, each one sported an expression of concern for him.
Cursing at being duped so easily, Naruto turned his ire inward to his vulpine passenger that was resting, seemingly ignoring the situation on the outside. 'You couldn't have broken me out of it? Or said literally anything at all??'
"Your constant avoidance of your mommy issues was becoming annoying."
'I don't have fucking mommy issues, Kurama!'
"There's a chakra imprint gathering dust in this seal that says otherwise."
Naruto audibly groaned in frustration. He had no retort for that, and unless he wanted to physically fight the two (four?) off, he had to concede.
Then again…
"Ow!" Naruto cried out after one of Karin's clones gave him a paper cut with the kunai.
"You were thinking of doing something stupid, and Ms. Konan gave me these to rein you in when you start thinking," the original Karin admonished.
The mention of Konan completely deflated him, and yet he still couldn't help the small, loving smile. He sighed in defeat, giving in to the demands of his companions. This was such a fucking drag.
Sitting almost lifelessly against a post and staring blankly into a pond in the home of the Nara Clan Head was the heir to the clan himself, Shikamaru. His usually tired eyes that hid a ruthlessly analytical gaze behind the façade held only exhaustion. He didn't pay any mind to the stress lines developing on his face. He didn't fight the sneeze that snuck up on him, nor did he question why it even came. Nothing could elicit a reaction from him.
Well, almost nothing.
"Shikamaru…" the tired and concerned voice of his father called from within their home behind him. "Come spend some time with your old man."
Naruto sighed once more and beckoned for the two to sit. Karin dispelled the other two clones, and she and Tayuya took a seat in front of him, awaiting his explanation. Naruto wanted to start off with a joke, but he knew they'd just call him out for stalling, so he jumped right into the thick of it.
"What would you do if you could see your mother again?" he asked Tayuya specifically, catching her way off guard.
"The fuck?" she coughed, completely flummoxed by the question. Even Karin's brow was scrunched in confusion.
"I'm curious," Naruto replied, pressing for an answer.
"I don't deal in shitty hypotheticals. Thought we went over this."
"Just humor me."
"Ugh, fucking jackass. Fine. I guess it would be nice. Barely fucking remember her, though. We done?"
Both Naruto and Karin could tell that she wasn't being entirely truthful in her response. Karin let it be for the moment, simply filing it away for a later date and turning back to Naruto to question him on where she thought he was going.
"Is this about your mother?" Karin softly ventured, and the avoidance of Naruto's gaze gave her all the answers she needed.
Tayuya looked between the two confusedly. "The Origami Demon?"
"No, his biological mother," Karin corrected. "He doesn't talk about her much."
She pinned her crimson gaze swimming in solicitude onto Naruto. "You don't talk about either of your parents much."
"They died the night I was born," Naruto dismissively grunted. "Not much to talk about."
"If you never even got to meet them, why do you seem so bitter about them?" Tayuya questioned, cutting to the heart of the matter again.
"I'm not bitter," Naruto quickly insisted.
"Not about her, at least."
"Shut up, Kurama," Naruto spoke aloud, not even caring that the other two couldn't hear the Kyubi and his snide laughter. "I'm not bitter, it's just weird and unnecessary. I have a mom, and she's wonderful. Nothing can nor will ever replace her. End of story."
Karin was both confused and even more concerned about him after the strange, insistent declaration. Tayuya, meanwhile, grew even more annoyed.
"Why are you so fixated on this?" she huffed in irritation. "She's dead, so it's not like you'll ever meet her. She literally can't replace the Origami Demon."
A sigh escaped him. Naruto wanted to believe that, and if he had his way, that would certainly be the case, but it wasn't so simple, unfortunately.
"Then address the goddamn elephant in the room. It's maddening to have this reminder of my previous container hanging around in perpetuity."
'Why haven't you purged the chakra imprint, then? You did it to Orochimaru.'
"The situations are different. You corralled Orochimaru into the seal without his knowledge when he attempted to take your body. Kushina is literally written into the framework of the seal itself. I can do nothing about her, dummy. You're supposed to be the fuinjutsu maestro."
Naruto groaned. There was no way other biju gave their jinchuriki nearly as much grief as Kurama gave him. There was absolutely no way.
Utakata and Hotaru sat near a campfire to eat after a long day of rigorous training. Hotaru was notably more beaten and worn down than her master, but that didn't mean the jinchuriki wasn't tired, as well. Maintaining an impenetrable bubble high in the air while his student flattened the terrain with tidal waves was tough work.
"Utakata?"
The suddenness of his slimy tenant's call took him by surprise. 'Yes, Saiken?'
"Are our pronouns they/them?"
'…Excuse me?'
"We are two souls inhabiting a singular vessel. We are by definition a plural entity. That must entail that we identify ourselves as such, correct?"
Utakata blinked and sat in silence, having no words whatsoever for his biju's absurd inquisition. Hotaru noticed him pausing mid-bite and sent him quizzical glances as she continued her own meal.
'…Saiken, what is it that you do within the seal all day?' he finally thought after restarting his brain.
"Absolutely fucking nothing."
'I can tell.'
Naruto shook his head; this impromptu intervention was going nowhere. "Guys, I really appreciate the concern. You don't have to worry about me, though."
Naruto stood up to leave, but a golden chain shot out of Karin's back and wrapped around his arm. He looked down at her, and his eyes met a desperate resolve brimming in her own. Tayuya scooted away to allow her the floor.
"It really hurt when I lost my mother," Karin lowly began. "She was all I had, and I was all she had. We were everything to each other when Kusa was just bleeding us dry of our chakra. Losing her crushed me, and it robbed me of the only rock I had when I was stuck in a village that saw me as nothing more than a resource to pilfer."
Her voice almost wavered. Almost. She held firm and looked Naruto directly in the eye. "Then, you found me. You rescued me, and for the first time since she died, things didn't feel so bleak anymore. You were a brilliant ray of hope when I was submerged in such thick darkness, and I clung onto you the first chance I got. I don't regret that, and I never will."
Naruto wasn't prepared for the depth she was unveiling. This wasn't a very common occurrence; he knew she cared about him, and he cared just as much about her, but neither ever really verbalized it.
"Of course, I still think about my mother," Karin continued. "I always will. You haven't replaced her… but that doesn't mean you're not just as important to me, Naruto. There's enough room in my heart for both of you. I didn't betray her or her memory by leaning onto you. I know the situations aren't exactly the same, and I may not know exactly what you're feeling, but you're not alone. You can lean on me, too; I'm here for you. I always am."
Karin thumbed in the direction of Tayuya. "She is, too, even if she's being a tsundere about it."
A chain shot out of her back to deflect the kunai that was lobbed at her head from the tsundere in question.
Naruto was struck silent by the heartfelt declaration. He could only stare at Karin with his mouth slightly agape as he processed everything she said. The silent staring dragged on for nearly ten seconds, and Karin's cheeks were steadily heating up. Just as quickly as it appeared, her resolve vanished, and she averted her gaze.
"J-just something to think about…" she awkwardly stammered.
With that completed, she turned tail and scrambled away. Naruto blankly watched her retreat, still utterly silent. He saw the rock coming from his periphery but didn't move to dodge it before it smacked into the side of his face, snapping him out of his stupor. He turned and watched Tayuya walk away, faintly grumbling something about "emotional fuckheads."
A smile slowly crept onto his whiskered face. Karin was right, as was Tayuya in her own, clipped way.
"You getting over yourself, now?"
"…Yeah. It's about time I did."
"Good. I won't have to deal with this damn chakra imprint invading my domain any longer."
"I'm not doing it in the seal."
"Hm?"
With the familiar cross hand seal, a shadow clone spawned beside him, then he bit his thumb and summoned the small, blue messenger salamander that often delivered updates from him to Pain.
"Got another message to send to Ame, Naruto?" the salamander asked with a salute.
"Not for you this time, Aoimori," Naruto denied, then he pointed at the clone. "You're going to Ame. You know exactly what to do when you get there."
"How the hell am I supposed to know that?" the clone asked in annoyance. "I'm not a mind reader."
"Because we're literally the same person, dumbass," Naruto deadpanned, the irony of calling a perfect clone of himself a dumbass not lost on him.
"Geez, chill out, I'm just messing with you," the clone raised his hands in mock surrender. "Should I visit both or just her?"
Naruto took a moment to think over the question, then he shrugged. "I'll leave that up to you."
"Roger," the clone acknowledged before flickering away.
Naruto turned back to Aoimori to find that he was receiving a strange look that was masking the salamander's amusement.
"You know, talking to yourself is usually a sign of a mental disorder," Aoimori jabbed.
"And salamander meat is a delicacy in Kusa," Naruto deadpanned in return.
Aoimori coughed and shakily cleared his throat. "S-so, what did you need of me today?"
"I have a special mission for you."
It had only been a month since the departure of two of their members with their respective apprentices for their training trips, but to Konan, it already felt like an eternity. She missed Naruto dearly, which wasn't terribly out of the ordinary, but the degree to which she felt his absence certainly was. It wasn't even the first time he had been out of the village for an extended period on a mission, but she felt particularly void without him home this specific instance, and she couldn't quite figure out why. Perhaps it was him calling her mom that day he and Karin returned with Tayuya. Perhaps it was the fact that she knew he wouldn't return home for at minimum two years. Perhaps it was the inevitability of her being killed within the next few years in the masked man's next attempt at Nagato's Rinnegan, potentially before those two years had even elapsed.
Whatever the case, it was driving her up the fucking wall. When the hell had she become a helicopter parent?
Parent. It was legitimately the most surreal thing for her to imagine, and Konan had witnessed quite a bit in her life. She never envisioned herself bringing any children into their war-torn world just for her to die and doom her children to grow up like she and so many others in Ame had. Then, she fell for Yahiko, and she began to rethink that possibility. Perhaps bringing a child into a world that they had made better wouldn't be such a terrible prospect…
Then, Yahiko died, and so, too, did her desire to have children. This world was much too unforgiving to create a life that would surely only suffer the indignities of pain, suffering, and loss.
That was until she stumbled upon a skinny, starving boy in the rain with nothing but the clothes on his back and a comically large scroll in hand. To this day, she could not give any one reason why she did it, but she took him in and never looked back. The following 7 years had been the best of her life. In many ways, Naruto was the child she wanted with Yahiko, and it wasn't simply because they bore a passing resemblance to each other.
Okay, maybe it was a little bit, but she could be forgiven for that.
As she gazed out at the pouring rain blanketing their highly industrialized pocket of the shinobi world from her balcony, she faintly noticed the slight sounds and vibrations of someone quietly approaching her from behind. She was a tad perplexed; anyone dumb enough to attempt to sneak up on her would surely be louder than that, but Nagato would almost certainly announce his presence before entering the room if he was searching for her, a habit he never quite let go from their time with Jiraiya-sensei. The only other person who moved around that quietly was…
"Naruto?" she asked, turning around to have her suspicions confirmed. Standing before her was the smiling blonde that had been occupying her thoughts.
"Sup," he casually greeted with an easy smile.
Konan blinked in confusion. "You're… back? So soon?"
"Nah, I'm just a clone," Naruto corrected. "Boss and the others are still in Uzu, though they might have left by the time I made it here."
Konan nodded, and her confusion developed into a small smile. "Not that I'm not happy to see you, but why come in person? I would have assumed that you would send a summons to deliver any messages."
"I'm not here to deliver a message, at least not to Uncle Nagato."
"Oh?"
Without warning, Naruto stepped forward, nearly startling Konan when he wrapped her into a warm, firm hug.
"Thank you," he said softly. "For everything."
She was momentarily shaken by the sudden and unprompted affection, but she quickly returned the embrace, tenderly rubbing his back as she did so. "What brought this on?"
She felt him somewhat deflating while in her arms, and she frowned. "Is everything okay?"
"You know how Nagato and I discovered the chakra imprints when we were screwing around with my seal?"
"I do. You told me about your conversation with your father. I had assumed you had mostly gotten past that by now. Is it still bothering you?"
Naruto shook his head, still wrapped in the embrace. "It's not that one."
Konan mulled that comment over for a moment before she broke the hug and set her knowing gaze upon him. "You don't need my permission to speak to your mother, Naruto."
"I'm speaking to her right now," he replied with a cheeky smile.
"I didn't give birth to you," Konan chuckled.
"Does that matter?" Naruto insisted. "You rescued me. You practically raised me. You were the first genuine source of comfort I've ever had. You gave me a whole new life, so as far as I'm concerned, you instigated my rebirth."
"That…" Konan began but paused to choke back the tears that were threatening to well up. "That is such a phenomenal reach."
Snorting at the joke that was working overtime to mask her genuine gratitude, Naruto wrapped her into another hug. "I really appreciate everything you've done for me, and I just wanted to make sure that you knew that."
Konan returned the hug in equal measure. "I already do."
The grass felt way too comfortable for Tenten in her exhaustion. She didn't think summoning would be this taxing, nor this goddamn difficult. She had spent the better part of two hours summoning nothing but tadpoles (if she was able to get anything at all), and it wasn't until her very last attempt did she get lucky and manage to bring forth an actual toad. She was so exhausted that she didn't even catch anything he said beyond his name before she collapsed into a heap.
"She really sucks at this," Gamakichi said from atop Jiraiya's head, and Tenten was much too tired to be aggravated at the comment.
"Indeed, she does," he agreed. "But it's all about making progress, and she's made a good bit of it. I think we've done enough for today, though."
Despite being beat beyond belief, Tenten was elated to hear some praise coming from her new master. However, the prospect of stopping here disturbed her; she had done nothing but fail all day, and she only managed one success. Today would not be a success until she was able to replicate that successful attempt consecutively.
"Wait," she called out from the ground as she struggled to return to her feet. "We can't stop here; I can still go."
"Kid, you can barely stand," Jiraiya said with a frown. "Chakra exhaustion is nothing to screw around with."
In response, Tenten stuffed her hand into her pouch and pulled out a food pill, and before Jiraiya could stop her, she wolfed it down and popped back to her feet with the artificial boost of chakra the pill gave her.
"I can still go," she insisted with her face set in pure determination.
Jiraiya shook his head in exasperation before chuckling. "I suppose you can, though we'll have to beat that recklessness out of you at some point. Alright, give it another go."
Tenten nodded, then she took a breath before flipping through the sequence she had burned into her memory and slamming her palm to the ground. One puff of smoke later, and a small, yellow toad with a dopey smile on his face had joined them.
"Hi everybody!" Gamatatsu happily greeted before turning to Tenten. "Hey, friend, how are ya? You got any snacks?"
Tenten was completely thrown for a loop by the new toad's… interesting disposition.
"Since you already ate the food pill like an idiot, we might as well put that energy to use," Jiraiya stated. "I'll admit that you're fast, but not fast enough, so we'll work on that next. You're gonna chase these two until you catch them, and you're not leaving the training grounds until you do."
"Wait, what-" she spoke up, but she was cut off by Jiraiya poofing away and the two toads vacating the scene way faster than any toad should be able to travel.
"Right…" Tenten sighed, then she darted after the fleeing toads.
Naruto was fucking insane. Aoimori knew that; hell, all of the Salamanders did. It was why they all liked him, with the exception of Ibuse, but Ibuse had never quite gotten over Hanzo's death. He was always saying he "cannot see Naruto bringing prosperity to the Salamanders like Hanzo had," but the old fart didn't even have any eyes. He quite literally couldn't see shit to begin with.
Back to Naruto, though, and the ridiculous task that he had given Aoimori: Naruto had tasked him with infiltrating Konoha, locating the grave of the former First Lady, and digging her up to retrieve some DNA, preferably in the form of a lock of her hair. He had no idea why Naruto wanted a lock of her hair, but he didn't ask questions. He didn't know how Naruto got down, and he certainly wouldn't judge.
The real challenge was how he was going to go about this. Sneaking into the village wasn't difficult; not only was it nighttime, but he was also small, and masking his chakra to remain mostly invisible was a salamander specialty. Even in the daytime, navigating the humans scurrying around the sprawling settlement would have been a cake walk. The real problem was that there weren't simply humans here. The minute he entered the village, he picked up the scent of toads.
This was going to be complicated.
The Salamanders and the Toads have had a rather tenuous relationship for generations. It all dated back to when the Tree Frogs and Dart Frogs broke away from the Toad Clan and formed their own joint clan with the support of the Salamanders. Ultimately, the loss of the Tree Frogs and Dart Frogs wasn't significant enough to warrant a bloody war with the Salamanders, so the Toads simply let them go, but there was still lingering soreness from the whole ordeal. Granted, their relationship wasn't so hostile that it was "fade on sight" like with the Toads and the Snakes… and the Hawks and the Snakes… and the Rats and the Snakes… and the Otters and the Snakes…
Man, the Snakes really had a lot of enemies.
Anyway, the Toads and the Salamanders weren't compelled to kill each other if they found themselves in the same place at the same time, but they weren't particularly warm to each other, either, and conflicts did sometimes arise. This was only exacerbated when Hanzo and Ibuse spanked Gamabunta so many years back; the old, warty fart still held a grudge about that, apparently.
As Aoimori scuttled through the village under the cover of darkness, he swiftly passed through training ground after training ground to limit the possibility of being discovered by any non-humans as much as he could, specifically remaining vigilant for any toads. That wouldn't be too hard, right? It was a big village, the chances of him running into any toads was minuscule-
"Gamakichi, I thought you said there would be snacks for us at the end of this."
Aoimori froze in place. Luckily for him, he was passing through a bush when he heard the dopey voice, but the voice was way too close for comfort and smelled far too strongly of toads. Silently, he crept to the edge of the bush and poked his head out of it, and just as he feared, two small toads were casually sitting atop a passed-out teenager. He was confident that if it came down to it, he could take both of them. However, he didn't want to cause any trouble for Naruto, so he decided to avoid conflict if at all possible.
"I doubt toots here has them, Gamatatsu," the red toad replied. "Old Man Jiraiya's gotta have a stash, though. He's the Hokage now; he could demand whatever he wants."
With that, the two hopped away from the scene, presumably in the direction of the Hokage for the snacks they were promised. Aoimori didn't really know, nor did he care. He was simply glad to not have been discovered. He scurried over the groaning teenager and continued on his way toward the cemetery. It didn't take too long for him to get there, but when he did, he was astonished at just how many headstones there were. How many people died in this fucking village??
Brushing that thought away, he just had to find the woman in question's burial plot. Unfortunately, cemeteries were not often alphabetized, so he'd have to hunt her down the hard way. The best place to start was where all the other important people were presumably buried, so to the front of the cemetery where all of the most ornate headstones were situated, he went.
"Mito Uzumaki, Toka Senju, Tenko Senju, Biwako Sarutobi…" Aoimori ran down the names as he scanned the headstones. "Ugh, where the hell is Kushina Uzumaki…"
"She's over there."
Aoimori froze for the second time that night, and his head slowly craned in the direction the voice came from. Staring down at him with a blank expression was Tsunade fucking Senju.
"…Shit," Aoimori muttered.
"You're Naruto's summon, right?" Tsunade asked, and the salamander slowly nodded. "What exactly does Naruto need with Kushina's body?"
Aoimori was debating if he should reverse summon and return home at having been caught (seriously, how the hell had she snuck up on him?), but she hadn't looked angry or threatened him a single time since she announced her presence, so it was possible that she wasn't there to apprehend him. He'd play it carefully.
"…Not really sure," Aoimori shrugged. "He didn't say. He just told me to get a lock of her hair."
"A lock of her hair?" she quirked an eyebrow in confusion.
"Yeah. Guy's a weirdo, but he's our weirdo."
"Fair enough," she sighed, then she pointed at the grave in question. "Kushina's over there."
"You're not here to stop me?" Aoimori carefully questioned.
Tsunade merely shook her head. "Nah. I think I might know what he's trying to do if all he needs is her hair, but I can't really figure out why he'd go that far. Not really my business either way, so have at it."
Without any fuss, Tsunade turned around and left the puzzled Aoimori to it. He watched her retreat, then he saw her stop and gaze at a particular headstone for a few seconds before continuing on her way. After a lengthy moment, he snapped out of his stupor and shrugged. He wouldn't look this gift horse in the mouth.
Omake: The Adventures of Mr. Worldwide and Cherry Blossom
Sakura dug into her fish after a long day of training. Kakashi-sensei put her through the ringer and then some; not only was it the hardest training she had ever endured, but it was the most serious and ruthless she had ever seen their generally easygoing sensei. Or, rather, her generally easygoing sensei, as she no longer had any teammates…
Stupid Sasuke. She wanted to believe that it was the cursed seal's influence poisoning his mind, but it hadn't been active a single second for the beating he leveled onto her at the Valley of the End. Granted, it didn't hurt nearly as much as getting impaled and kicked off a cliff, and she could feel that he was holding back and pulling his punches the whole time, so perhaps he wasn't completely lost? Maybe there was still hope for him?
Didn't matter. Hope or not, she'd get him back. She'd hunt his ass down and drag him back to Konoha by his high ass collar.
"Ryo for your thoughts?" Kakashi said from across the campfire, snapping her out of her musings.
"Huh?"
"You haven't taken a bite in about 5 minutes. I assumed you were deep in thought."
"Oh…" she muttered in embarrassment at her blatant absentmindedness. "Yeah, I was just…"
"Thinking about Sasuke?" Kakashi finished.
"…I was too weak to stop him from leaving," she admitted. "I need to become strong enough to bring him back. I couldn't do anything the first time. I'm going to be ready for the next time we meet. There won't be a third time."
"And if you have to kill him?"
Silence fell over the campfire. Kakashi kept his eye locked on his pink-haired student, whose own gaze was stuck on the fire between them. The silence persisted for a minute, only filled by the crackling flames and the soft sounds of the forest around them. Finally, Sakura brought her hardened, green gaze up from the fire to meet her sensei's single exposed eye.
"There won't be a third time," was all she said.
Another silence followed as Kakashi stared back at her for a lengthy moment. He could see a storm of emotions swimming around behind the resolute facade in her eyes, but the most prevalent one was resignation. It told him that she had already considered that possibility and was still chewing on the idea of having to go through with it. That was a good sign.
He nodded and returned to his fish, somehow having eaten half of it outside of Sakura's notice and never exposing his face to her. She put her curiosity about that aside and took another bite from her fish. That was the scene for the next few minutes; the sensei-student duo ate their meals in relative silence, while the fire continued to crackle, and the critters of the forest went about their routines.
"Many men," Kakashi absentmindedly hummed, "wish death upon me. Blood in my eye, dawg, and I can't see. I'm trying to be what I'm destined to be, and ninjas try to take my life away."
"Uh, what?" Sakura coughed, completely taken by surprise.
"Hm?"
"Were you just singing?"
"Was I?" Kakashi asked, placing a hand on his chin. "I suppose it's a habit of mine from my youth that I never quite got over."
"Oh…" Sakura muttered. She never knew that about him. She never would've even guessed, honestly. Kakashi-sensei was still an enigma to her and likely most other people in the village. Casting a final glance at him, she returned to her fish and took another bite, enjoying the silence that followed her questioning of him.
"I put a hole in a ninja for fucking with me..."
Like I said before, I'm taking some liberties with the Uzumaki lore, such as the whole thing about the Attacking and Sealing Chains. Don't worry about it, it's fine.
I had a massive bout of writer's block for this chapter, and I ended up writing a drabble involving Gaara, Deidara, and Sasori discussing art in the meantime. I was going to drop it as an omake at the end of this chapter, but I like it way too much to not use it as an actual scene at this point. I'm gonna hold onto it until it's time. In exchange, I give you Kakashi singing a 50 Cent song.
Thanks for reading.
